SIDE LINE 
POULTRY KEEPING 



BY EDGAR WARREIV 




PRICE FIFTY CENTS 



PUBLISHED BY 

CLARENCE C. DE PUY. Syracuse, N. Y. 
1911 





Glass, 
Book. 



vv ^^ 



SIDE LINE 
POULTRY KEEPING 









"T\V^O DOLLARS a DAY 
FROM POLLTRA" AND EGOS" 

REVISED AND IMPROVED 



BY EDGAR WARREN. 



PRICE 50 CENTS. 



Published by 

CLARENCE C. DePUY^ 

Syracuse, N. Y, 

1911. 



^^""""v 

^i^ .^•'^- 



Copyrighted as "Two Dollars a Day from Poultry and Eggs," 1902. 

EDGAR L. WARREN. 

(Edgar Warren.) 



Copyrighted as "Two Dollars a Day from Poultry and Eggs," 190'), 
EDGAR WARREN. 



Copyrighted as "Side Line Poultry Keeping," 1911. 
EDGAR WARREN. 







iCl.A30i470 



TS 






CHAPTER I. 



Side-Line Poultry Keeping. 



This book is rewritten to meet the needs of those who 
wish to keep poultry as a side line. So far as the author 
knows it occupies a field peculiarly its own. Many books 
have been written about poultry keeping the past few years, 
and many articles have appeared in the papers on the subject, 
but the books and articles have been written either to give 
the general principles underlying poultry culture, to exploit 
some "system" or to describe some mammoth plant in which 
the writer or advertiser is interested. The man who wishes 
to keep hens as a side line, to add a few hundred dollars a 
year to his income or to reduce family expenses has been 
neglected. 

Side line poultry keeping is destined to assume vast promi- 
nence in the future. There are two great movements in 
progress in the industrial world: the first is the movement to 
shorten the hours of labor; the second is the tendency of 
everything we buy to increase in price. The mechanic re- 
ceives good wages and works short hours, but he can hardly 
support his family, to say nothing of laying up something for 
a rainy day. If he is to get ahead, if he is to have a bank 
account, if he is e^'er to own a home, he must have some side 
line to occupy his spare hours and add to his monthly income. 

The side line poultry keeper has certain great advantages. 
He does not take the chances the man takes who gives up his 
regular work to engage in the poultry business. His trade 
or occupation will give him a living while he is learning. He 
can begin small and grow. Then he has a market. The 
side-line poultry keeper is generally located in a city or large 
country village, and has customers at his doors. He takes 
every profit. He gets the whole of the consumer's dollar. 
Not so the man who is back on the farm. He sells to the 
grocer, who in turn sells to the commission merchant, who 
sells to the retail dealer, who sells to the consumer. At least 
three profits are sacrificed. The side liner can make his hens 
pay him at least a dollar more a head a year than can the man 
hack on the farm. 



According to the census of 1910 there were 91,972,266 
people in the continental United States, and of these 42,623,383 
lived in urban and 49,348,883 in rural territory. Town-folk 
made up 46.3 per cent and country folk 53.7 per cent of our 
people. In 1900 the two elements stood at 40.5 and 59.5 per 
cent, respectively. Seven-tenths of our total gain in the dec- 
ade from 1900 to 1910 went to urban territory ; in other words, 
consumers are increasing more than twice as fast as pro- 
ducers. 

Such being the case, the city must produce some of its 
own food or go hungry. Within the five-cent carfare zone of 
niany of our cities there are houses with land that can be 
rented for less than a man would have to pay for far less 
desirable quarters in the congested district. What a blessing 
it would be to many a clerk or mechanic to move back a few 
miles from City Hall and rent one of these places ! A\'ith his 
garden and small fruits and a good flock of hens he could 
easily pay his rent and lay up something besides. The pro- 
ductive years in a man's life are few at best, and unless he 
makes the most of them he faces an old age of penury and 
want. 

A CASE IN POINT— MR. F. H. DUNLAP OF WEST 

SALISBURY, N. H., CLEARED $1,188.05 FROM 

POULTRY AND EGGS IN 1910. 

Up among the hills of New Hampshire, in the little town 
of Salisbury, one hundred miles from the metropolis of New 
England, lives a man whom I greatly admire and respect. 
Big hearted, broad minded, breezy and optimistic, he is a good 
type of the men who are making this country great. Con- 
ducting the village store and postofUce, with not more than 
two hours a day on an average to devote to outside affairs, 
he has developed a poultr}' business which netted him 
$1,188.05 profit in 1910. 

There were three sons in his father's family, and it was 
quite a question which one should stay at home to look after 
the old folks and carry on the father's business. The lot 
finally fell to Frank. He took his place behind the counter, 
married and settled down, and became a permanent fixture in 
the little village where he was born and passed his boyhood 
days. 

The young man was soon confronted by a serious prob- 
lem, and that was how to get ahead in the world. The profits 



of the store were just about enough to support his family, 
but not enough to enable him to lay by anything. So he 
began to set his mind to work to devise means by which he 
might add to his income. 

The story of the way in which he was led to take up 
poultry keeping as a side line is most interesting and amusing. 
One morning after he returned home from the city where he 
had been employed he was making a tour of the premises and 
for some reason or other went down into the barn basement. 
As he opened the door he was set upon by about twenty 
gaunt and eager hens, which, as he expressed it, seemed 
hungry enough to eat him up. Returning to the house, he 
asked his mother who fed the hens. She said, "I don't know ; 
your father, I suppose." Hunting up his father, he put to 
him the same question. "Fred does, I guess," said his father. 
Hunting up his brother, he asked. "Fred have you fed the 
hens?" "Well, no. not to-day; I fed them yesterday, or day 
before, I forget which." "That settles it," said Frank. "I 
will feed them myself." So he got some grain, gave the hens 
a breakfast, rinsed out the water dish and gave them fresh, 
clean water to drink, and in this way "adopted" the home- 
flock of ])oultry as his part of the family chores. He ke]it an 
account of the grain, meal, etc.. which he used in feediing 
them, fed them what he felt was a good ration, and in two 
weeks' time those hens, which before had been laying scarcely 
an egg a day, were turning out a dozen eggs a day, and at the 
price his father allowed him for them at the store he could 
see better than a hundred per cent profit in those dozen eggs 
a day. 

THE POULTRY PLANT. 

Mr. Dunlap's plant, as it exists to-day, is an expansion 
from that small begininng. It is not a large plant, two and 
one-half acres of sandy land shaped like a capital L. On 
what might be called the base or foot of the L are the dwelling 
house and stable, a small lawn and garden, and the laying 
houses. On the shaft or stem of the L are eight chicken 
houses, each 8x 12 feet, situated one ahead of the other until 
the whole shaft is filled. I visited the plant in November, 
1902, and again in August, 1911, and found that the plant had 
not grown in the meantime. There are two reasons for this : 
1. The difficulty in getting more land; for, strange to say, in 
the country it is often impossible to induce the owner of a 



piece of land to sell. 2. The fact that the plant as it exists 
now is about all Mr. Dunlap can handle in the limited time 
at his command. 

The poultry houses are good, substantial buildings, but not 
costly or elaborate. The eight chicken houses are each 8x12 
feet, eight feet high in front and five feet at the back, with a 
lean-to shed roof. , They are built of hemlock boards, covered 
with roofing fabric or half-inch hemlock sheathing; the roofs 
are shingled. All these houses have board floors, eighteen 
inches from the ground, and the chicks run under these houses 
in the summer. 

There are five laying houses on the plant, three 30x12, 
one 60x12, and one 44x14. These houses are divided into 
pens ten feet wide, and in the winter accommodate about 500 
head of laying stock. Two of these laying houses are two- 
story affairs, the upper stories being utilized for setting hens 
in spring. The houses have cement floors. They are not 
model houses in any way, but just plain, serviceable houses 
such as have grown out of the builder's needs. 

THE LAYING STOCK. 
Mr. Dunlap aims to winter five hundred head of laying 
stock — four hundred pullets and one hundred year-old hens. 
These are kept in flocks of twenty-five each. The majority 
of the birds are Rhode Island Reds, although there are a few 
White Leghorns. There are also crosses of the two breeds. 

METHOD OF FEEDING. 

Mr. Dunlap has developed a method of feeding, highly 
original and exceedingly effective. Where one wants a large 
egg output and is willing to put in a little extra time for the 
sake of getting it, no better method could be adopted. It is 
an economical method in all but time, the feed-bills being 
only about two-thirds what they would be under a different 
system. 

Mr. Dunlap sticks to the wet mash. Every morning in 
the year his hens are fed a warm mash, mixed up the night 
before and so compounded that when fed it is moist and 
crumbly, but not sloppy. In the chapter on "The Laying 
Stock" I say that one of the fundamental things in feeding- 
hens is to give them variety. Mr. Dunlap believes in this. 
He has four combinations, which he feeds on consecutive 
days, and which I will describe, designating each day by the 
leading ingredient in the combination. 



Boiled Potato Day. — Boiled potatoes, one peck ; gluten, 
four quarts. The potatoes are boiled the night before ; the 
o-luten is added after the potatoes are l:)oiled ; the mass is 
allowed to stand on the stove over night. 

In the morning add two quarts bran, two quarts "prov- 
ender" (cracked corn and oats), three pints of beef scrap or 
animal meal. 

Steamed Clover Day. — Take a peck of second-crop clover 
hay, chopped fine, pour on boiling water and let it stand in a 
covered kettle over night. In the morning add bran, prov- 
ender and beef scraps as on "Boiled Potato Day." 

Waste Bread Day. — Mr. Dunlap buys waste bread by the 
barrel, having it shipped u]) from Boston. This is soaked 
over night in boiling water, and in the morning bran, prov- 
ender and beef scraps are added as before. 

Oats and Gluten Day. — Soak eight quarts of oats in boiling 
water ; pour off some of the water and add two quarts gluten ; 
mix them well together and let stand in covered kettle over 
night. In the morning add the same combination as on other 
days. 

Salt is added to all these combinations in limited amount, 
except when waste bread is fed. This contains a small 
amount of salt which was put in before it was baked. 

In giving the formulas I have been careful about prepara- 
tion rather than to give the exact amount to feed to a gi\'en 
number of hens. The reader will have to learn how much his 
hens need by experience ; they will need more on some days 
than on others. Feed all the mash they will eat up clean in 
from fifteen to twenty minutes. Never leave any uneaten 
mash in the dishes to sour. 

In the moulting season Mr. Dunlap frequently adds a 
quart of linseed meal to the combination, to promote the 
growth of feathers. 

Besides the morning mash Mr. Dunlap keeps a hopper of 
dry feed in each pen all the time, so that the biddies can help 
themselves. The combination is as follows : Two quarts 
alfalfa; two quarts bran; two quarts "provender" (cracked 
corn and oats) ; one quart chopped clover ; one quart middlings ; 
one and one-half quarts beef scraps or boiled beef and bone ; 
a little salt; a little charcoal. 

If the hens are laying heavily and growing light, add tw^o 
quarts corn meal to tlie drv feed. 



8 

The greater part of the day Mr. Dunlap is employed at his 
store, which is about a hundred yards from his place, so that it 
is necessary for him to economize in time in every way. As a 
matter of fact he does not have more than two hours a day 
on the average to devote to his fowls ; if he gets more he has 
to take it out of the night. There are certain seasons of the 
year when he has to work by lantern light long after everyone 
■else in the little village has gone to sleep. He has an hour at 
noon in which to eat his dinner, feed and water the hens, 
•collect the eggs and do any little chore about the houses that 
must be done. In this noon hour Mr. Dunlap gives his hens 
their grain for the day. He selects the grain that he thinks 
will balance the ration fed in the morning and throws down 
enough to keep the hens scratching in the deep litter a good 
part of the afternoon. Boiled Potato Day he feeds oats, 
wheat, cracked corn or l:»arley, sometimes separately, some- 
limes in combination. Steamed Clover Day he feeds cracked 
corn ; Waste Bread Day, wheat ; Oats and Gluten Day, barley 
or buckwheat. 

Every fall Mr. Dunlap swaps one hundred bushels of hen 
manure for one hundred bushels of turnips, and this gives 
him his yearly supply of green food without any money cost. 
These turnips are cut through the middle, the two halves 
thrown on the Hoor of the pen, where the hens find them and 
•devour them greedily. 

Upon referring to the figures which Mr. Dunlap gives us 
ifor 1910 it will be seen that he paid out for feed during the 
year $86.45. This is exceedingly small, when you reflect 
that he sometimes has five hundred head of laying stock and a 
tlKHisand chicks on hand. Mr. Dunlap keeps down his feed 
liills in scNcral ways. He buys in ton lots, and gets the dis- 
'count. He mixes up everything himself, and does not pay a 
poultry sales house to do it for him. He utilizes waste mate- 
:rial as far as possible and turns his Yankee shrewdness in 
trade to good account. Thus his green feed does not cost 
'him a penny : the clover hay he cuts himself ; the boiled pota- 
toes are small unmarketable potatoes which can be bought 
for a few cents a bushel. In other words, he makes every- 
thing tell. 

REARING THE CHICKS. 

Limitations of space forbid me to enter into detail about 
tliis part of Mr. Dunlap's work. Like everything he does, his 



method of rearing the chicks is original and instructive. He 
hatches under hens and broods in brooders. In my mention 
•of his laying stock I said that he aimed to winter five hundred 
head — four hundred pullets and one hundred yearling hens. 
The eggs for hatching come from the year-old hens — Mr. 
Dunlap believes that one gets stronger chicks in this way. 
Tullets are employed for sitters. "The meanest part of my 
work," says Mr. Dunlap, "is taking the chicks away from the 
mothers. I feel ashamed to look a hen in the face." He 
believes that it does a hen good to hatch a brood of chicks; 
she will lay all the better for the rest and change. Two 
brooders are installed in each of the eight small houses I have 
described, and each brooder is filled with chicks. "I aim to 
put fifty in a batch," says Mr. Dunlap, ''but often T am obliged 
to put in from sixty to eighty." The chicks are fed on chick 
feed at first, but after a few weeks are fed much the same as 
the hens. The yards where they are confined are as bare of 
grass as a bald-headed man's pate is of hair. Mr. Dunlap is 
obliged to cut grass and throw it into the }ards for green 
feed. 

"Are you ever troubled with white diarrhoea?" 

"Sometimes — I don't know any poultryman that isn't.'' 

"What do you do for it?'' 

"I use ammoniated citrate of iron, which I Iniy at the drug 
•store. I put a quarter of a teaspoonful in a quart of water — 
•enough to turn the water quite red- — and let them take their 
•own medicine. I keep this up a week or ten days, making the 
■solution weaker as the chicks get o\'er their trouble." 

MARKETIN'G THE PRODUCT. 

On account of his location, so remote from a big city, Mr. 
Dunlap is at a great disadvantage in marketing his product. 
He ships to Boston, selling to commission merchants there. 
He ships in 49-dozen egg cases and ships every day. The 
■stage takes the case from his store to North Boscowan, and 
the express takes it there. It costs him 20 cents a case to get 
the eggs to Boston, and there is the commission to be de- 
•ducted besides. Mr. Dunlap does not get fancy prices for 
his eggs. Fifty cents in winter is the top price, and they go 
as low as eighteen cents in the spring. "If I were near a good 
market," he says, 'T could make at least one-third more every 
year than I do." 

Besisdes his remoteness from market Mr. Dunla'p has to 



10 

contend with the rigorous winters of Central New Hampshire. 
"1 have seen the houses so covered with snow that I could 
barely discern their outlines. In one big storm all I could 
see was the roofs. It took me from 7 o'clock in the morning 
until 1 o'clock in the afternoon to shovel paths and get the 
hens fed. 'Confound the poultrv business! it's too strenuous 
for me,' I thought. But that day I took ten dollars and 
seventy-five cents' worth of eggs out of the houses, and the 
feed cost just an even two dollars.'' 

"When 1 was here before, in 1902, you sold your fowls 
alive. Do you do so now?" 

''No; I have a better way. I pay a man eight cents a head 
to come to the house and get the fowls, take them home, kill 
and dress them, ship them to Boston and sell them to com- 
mission merchants there. All I have to do is to furnish the 
fowls and take the check." 

"You think it better to kill and dress than to ship alive?" 

"I do. There is quite a shrinkage in weight on live fowls. 
Then the commission men will write you that they found one 
or two dead in each crate. It's a lie ; but you can't prove it. 
I get five cents a pound more on an average on each fowl, and 
the express rate is less. The gain is about twenty-five cents a 
bird." 

$1,188.05 PROFIT IN 1910. 

Mr. Dunlap very kindly drew up for me a balance sheet 
of his business for 1910. The figures are so inspiring and 
instructi\e that I reproduce them here: 
Poultry in account with 

F. H. Dunlap. 
Debtor. 

Jan. 1 To 570 birds on hand @ 75c $ 427.50 

Oct. 1 To cash paid for breeding stock 23.00' 

Dec. 31 To cash paid for feed for year 867.45 

$1,317.95 
Creditor. 

Dec. 31 By 625 birds on hand (a) 75c $ 468.75 

Dec. 31 By 65,020 eggs laid during year 1,621.91 

Dec. 31 By poultrv sold during year 415.34 

$2,506.00' 
Profit for year $1,188.05 



n 

Profit per week $22.85 

Profit per day $3.25 

Xo account is made for fowls consumed on the home table. 

THE BALANCE SHEET OF THE YEARS. 

Mr. Dunlap l^egan his experiment with hens in 1886. and 
began in a very small way. It took him six or eight years to 
get his plant to its present size, and he has not attempted to 
increase it. But each year he makes it pay a little more. He 
took up poultry keeping as a means of getting something 
ahead. And in this he has been eminently successful. The 
profits for the twenty-five years have been $13,400.41. In other 
words, he is $13,400.41 better off than he would have been if 
he had not made the experiment. Out of the profits of his 
flock he has bought his land, erected his poultrv buildings, 
built a fine house and stable, installed a water system, bought 
a horse, wagon, sleigh and harness, made necessary repairs; 
and should have a surplus of $7,255.41 wisely invested, as no 
doubt he has. Besides the financial returns poultry keeping 
has given him a new interest in life, has made him many 
pleasant acquaintances and friends, and has given him quite 
a renown. It certainl}' has paid. 

MR. R. A. RICHARDSON, A SHOE CUTTER IN HAVER- 
HILL. MASS.. LAID BY $1,009.31 IN 1910 
FROM HIS HENS. 

I could go on and cite instance after instance where men 
are making good money on the side with their hens, but I 
have not space to do so. Nor is it necessary. Two or three 
examples are as good as a thousand. Mr. Dunlap is an illus- 
tration of what a man way back in the country can do. I am 
now going to show the possibilities of a city lot. 

Mr. R. A. Richardson is a shoe cutter in Haverhill, Mass., 
a city of about forty thousand inhabitants, situated on the 
banks of the rolling Merrimac. He has been interested in 
poultry for many years and when he was younger bred show 
specimens. 

Twelve years ago Mr. Richardson began to think seriously 
about the future. He was married and had a little family, and 
had nothing to support them but his earnings at the shoe 
bench. Shoe manufacturing is a peculiar business. Twice a 
year the shops shut down for several weeks, or run with a 
reduced force, and although a shoe cutter makes good wages 



12 

when he works, there is much lost time. Suppose sickness 
should come, or accident, what would happen? What would 
iDecome of him and his family when he was too old to work? 
for in shoe factories young men are given the preference. Mr. 
Richardson saw but one chance for himself, and that was to 
take up a side line. But what should it be? He had no cap- 
ital and no credit; literally, not a dollar in the world. 

His thoughts turned to the poultry business, with which 
he had some acquaintance. He could start in that with very 
little capital. Mr. Richardson had visited the shows and he 
knew that many people were interested in fancy poultry. He 
had read of the prices paid for exhibition stock. He reasoned 
out that for him there was a better field in utility than in 
exhibition stock; for ten persons are interested in utility stock 
to one who is interested in show specimens. 

Mr. Richardson started out with the ambition to produce 
the greatest strain of layers in the world, and settled upon the 
White Wyandotte as the bird best adapted to his purpose. 
The White Wyandotte lays a brown egg, and a brown egg is 
called for in the Boston market. The White Wyandotte has 
a large breast development, which makes it an ideal bird for a 
broiler. It is larger than the Leghorn and makes better 
poultry. It seemed to combine all the good qualities more 
than any other breed. 

Mr. Richardson reasoned out that the only way to get 
great laA^ers was to breed from great layers, and he installed 
trap nests and kept the record of every hen. This he could 
not possibly have done without the assistance of his wife. 
"She is as interested in the business as I am," said Mr. Rich- 
ardson to the writer. AVhile he stood at the bench day after 
day cutting out soles and uppers, his wife was busy with the 
birds, and every time a hen laid an egg she was given credit 
for it in a book. As a result of this careful, conscientious 
work carried on for twelve consecutive years Mr. Richardson 
has developed a strain of phenomenal layers. 

When his strain was sufficiently established to justify it, 
Mr. Richardson began to advertise in the poultry papers. He 
now has calls for stock from all over the United States and 
Canada, and from across the water. He does not get the 
prices fanciers get for their birds, but still receives a satis- 
factory remuneration. The highest price he ever received 
was $45 for a cockerel and hen ; but $25 for a cockerel and $10 
to $15 for a pullet are not uncommon figures. Of course he 



13 

has many birds that he sells for much less. From the sale 
of breeding stock and eggs for hatching combined with market 
eggs and fowls sold for eating, Mr. Richardson cleaned up 
$1,009.31 in 1910, and kept his job as a shoe cutter besides! 

Mr. Richardson has an acre of land on Linwood street in 
Haverhill, about a mile and a half from the center of the city. 
The ground is high, and the view from the plant is delightful. 
The buildings are not imposing. There is a long laying house 
60x12 feet, divided into six pens, with dirt floors. This 
house is cheaply constructed and is covered with a red roofing 
paper. He has a chicken house 25 x 8, divided into three 
pens, and a brooder house 6x6. "Put your money in stock 
rather than in buildings," is Mr. Richardson's advice, and he 
practices what he preaches. "Start with the best stock you 
can get hold of. Pay $25 for a single bird, if necessary. 
Don't hesitate a minute, if it is worth it. The more money 
you pay for stock, other things being equal, the more money 
your stock will earn for you." 

Mr. Richardson's poultry business is growing so fast that 
he is seriously contemplating giving up his job in the shoe 
shop and devoting all his time to it. He is negotiating for 
two acres of land which joins his, and if he gets it will greatly 
enlarge his plant. He now carries from 150 to 175 breeding 
birds through the winter and raises about 300 chicks. 

Twelve years ago Mr. Richardson did not have a cent. 
He now owns a house and lot, has a good equipment and has 
money in the bank — all the result of side-line poultrv keeping. 
And he is a comparatively young man yet ! 



CHAPTER II. 



Making a Start. 



The great advantage of side-line poultry keeping is that a 
man can make a start and get his experience while working 
at his regular busitiess. I hope the reader of this book will 
dismiss from his mind at once any thought that poultry keep- 
ing is a get-rich-quick scheme. It is not. There is good 
money in the business, as I have shown and shall show, but 
not every one can get hold of it. Doubtless the proportion of 
failures is as great in the poultry business as in any other. 
Riding through the country one sees plant after plant aban- 
doned and falling into decay. One is continually meeting the 
man who was once enthusiastic over poultry keeping, but is 
now disillusioned and tells you sadly. "There's nothing in it." 
And when a man buys a poultry farm his neighbors shake 
their heads and prophesv failure. 

EXPERIENCE NECESSARY. 

The causes of failure in the poultry business are doubtless 
as numerous as in any other, but the cause that is the most 
prolific is inexperience. There are three things that every 
man seems to think he can do : preach the Gospel, : edit a 
newspaper, and run a poultry plant. But he finds if he tackles 
any one of these jobs that he is up against a bigger proposition 
than he realized. 

Some time ago I received a letter from a woman whose 
husband had made some money in the drug business and now 
wanted to get away from it into the freer life of the farm. 
There was a poultry plant near where they lived that was for 
sale, the owner haying made a failure of it, and the woman 
wrote me to know what chance her husband would have for 
success if he sold his store and bought the plant, knowing 
nothing of the business. I wrote back that he would have just 
exactly the same chance that a man would have who knew 
nothing of the drug business and who should buy out her hus- 
band's store. Set it down as the basic principle in all your 
calculations, that the poultry business requires just as careful 



15 

an apprenticeship as any other, and that the man who is to 
succeed must know it root and branch. 

BEGIN SMALL AND GROW. 

Fnitunatelv a man can serve his apprenticeship to the 
poultry business while he is earning his bread and butter at 
something- else, and this to me is one of its chief charms. In 
what other business in the world can a man begin so small 
and invest so little money at the start? If a man has an old 
dry goods box at his command, a sitting hen and a clutch of 
eggs, he can set his feet in a path that may lead on to fortune. 

vSavs "Connuercial Poultry": "'It is a matter of history 
that nearly every one of the large poultry plants in the United 
States that has pro^■ed successful has been built up from a 
small foundation. It is also a matter of history that there are 
a numlier of large plants that have proved unsuccessful and 
unprofitable simpl}' because the owner undertook to accom- 
plish something without fitting himself for the task. Those 
who have succeeded have been content to start in a small way 
and expand as their knowledge of the business and their 
abiilty to handle it warranted the expansion. 

"Take, for instance, the plant of U. R. Fishel at Hope, 
Ind., AMiite Leghorn Poultry Farm at Waterville, N. Y., H. J. 
Blanchard at Groton, N. Y.. Henry Van Dreser at Cobleskill, 
N. Y.. and many other of the larg"est and most profitable plants 
in the country — each of them had a small 1:)eginning and 
simply grew into the mammoth institutions that they are 
to-day. 

"L^. R. Fishel started with a few hens in a back yard a 
dozen years ago. To-day he has 120 acres devoted to poultry 
and does an annual business very close to the $20,000 mark. 
The White Leghorn Poultr}^ Farm at Waterville, N. Y., is the 
outgrowth of a score of hens kept in a house less than eight 
feet square the first winter. To-day the farm consists of 
about 160 acres — with a recent addition — with a score or more 
of large houses, the largest being 500 feet long. Although ten 
thousand S. C. White Leghorns are raised annually upon this 
farm, the demand for stock and eggs nearly always exceeds 
the supply. H. J- Blanchard of Groton, N. Y., has become 
wealthy from his chicken business, although he has a farm of 
but twenty acres. Henry Van Dreser started in a small way 
and to-day has one of the largest commercial and fancy poultry 
plants in the East." 



16 

"The same is true of almost every large poultry plant in 
the country. There are a few, to be sure, that have been 
started on an extensive scale by men of wealth, but if they 
have proved successful it is because experienced poultrymen 
have been employed to manage them." 

TliE FIRST STEP. 

v^uppose a man has no practical knowledge of the poultry 
l)usiness, but has become interested in it from reading about 
it in the papers and talking with friends, how would I advise 
him to proceed? It would depend something upon the season 
of the }ear. Suppose it to be fall. I would advise him to send 
awav to a breeder of established reputation for a breeding pen 
of the variety he has selected. A breeding pen consists of a 
male and four females, and may generally be purchased for 
from $15 to ^25. The breeding pen may consist of four pul- 
lets and a cock, but I think it better to reverse the arrange- 
ment and purchase four hens and a cockerel. Pullets are all 
right to breed from, provided they are mature: but these are 
the kind the breeder does not care to sell. On the other hand, 
he is always ready to dispose of his mature birds. From such 
a pen as this a man should get from 150 to 200 chicks in the 
spring, and have a good number of choice pullets and cockerels 
in the fall. 

Four hens will not be enough to keep a vigorous cockerel 
at work, and so I would advise the beginner to pick up eight 
mature, well-grown pullets around home. These may be put 
in -the pen with the rest. But before this is done, they should 
be well dusted with some good insect powder, for farmers' 
hens are proverbially lousy and if not "doctored" will infect 
the rest. 

These eight pullets of nondescript variety will do for sitters 
and mothers in the spring. The four hens should give you at 
least 60 eggs apiece during the hatching season, and if the 
eggs are reasonably fertile you should get from 150 to 200 
chicks. From these you should get a good number of pullets 
in the fall. 

The advantage of starting with a breeding pen is that one 
will be likely to have eggs on hand whenever they are wanted, 
and there are no delays, no eggs chilled or In'oken in transit. 
The male with which you started should be kept the second 
year and mated with pullets of his own get. 

Starting in the spring one would naturally begin with eggs. 



17 

You will need at least 100 to give you anything of a start, and 
these will cost you $10. Beware of cheap eggs and cheap 
stock. You will never be satisfied until you get good standard 
l:)red fowds, and these cannot be produced or sold for the price 
you pay for dunghills. It has been my experience that the 
birds I paid the most for at the start were the greatest money- 
makers in the end. 

KEEP ONLY THOROUGHBREDS. 

It seems almost unnecessary at this stage of the world's 
history to advise the prospective poultryman to keep only 
thoroughbreds, and yet one still meets the man who insists 
that crosses or mongrels lay as well and pay better than they. 
Let us examine this proposition a moment. If mongrels and 
crosses lay as well and pay better than thoroughbreds, why is 
it that the great commercial plants throughout the land have 
discarded them in favor of standard-bred fowls? Why is it 
that the great egg records, as shown by the trap nest, uni- 
formly come from thoroughbreds and not from mongrels or 
crosses? It costs no more to raise a thoroughl)red than a 
dunghill, no more to feed it after it is raised. A flock of l)irds 
of one variety looks better than a flock made up of everything 
under the sun. and will do better. Dift'erent breeds require 
different treatment, and wdiere they are all mixed up in one 
flock conditions cannot help being unfavorable to some. Eggs 
coming from one breed are more uniform, and when the birds 
are sent to market they bring two or three cents more a pound 
than a mixed lot. AA'here a man keeps onlv pure-bred fowls 
of some popular strain he can, e^•en without advertising, sell 
a good many sittings ctf eggs to his neighbors in the spring 
and dispose of his surplus cockerels to them in the fall. Time 
and time again have I had visitors come to mv ])lace, who had 
no intention of purchasing when they came, whr) became so 
fascinated at what they saw of my beautiful White AA'}'an- 
dottes that they placed a good order with me Ik- fore thev 
went away. 

BREEDS THAT PAY. 

One of the difficulties of the l^eginner is to determine what 
variety to keep. The latest edition of the Standard of I'er- 
fection recognizes seventy-five or more varieties of the do- 
mestic fowl, not including Bantams, which are miniature or 
dwarf specimens of the various breeds. Should a man in this 



18 

undecided state of mind visit a great show in which are 
exhibited the l)est specimens of all the leading varieties — the 
aristocrats of Poultrydom — his confusion becomes worse con- 
founded : and should he run across champions of several of 
the leading breeds and let them talk to him for half an hour 
each, his mind will be in such a whirl that it is impossible for 
him to make a decision. It is to help clear up the whole 
.matter that this section is written. 

The money-making varieties may be counted up on the 
fingers of both hands. I do not mean by this that men do not 
make money on other varieties, for they do ; but there are six 
or eight varieties which pay Avell in the hands of almost any- 
one. If a man is t«^ become a fancier or a specialist it may be 
wise for him to go afield and take an entirely different breed : 
but if a man is after a safe, conservative proposition he would 
better stick to the varieties T am about to mention. 

1. The Leghorns. Brown and White. The Leghorns have 
been denominated '^egg machines," and they well deserve the 
•appellation. They are prolific producers of white eggs; mature 
■early, are active, hardy and do not eat so much as the larger 
"breeds. Non sitters. In some markets white eggs are demand- 
ed by the best trade, and command a premium. 

2. Rhode Island Reds. A valuable addition to the Amer- 
ican class. Hardy, good layers of brown eggs, a rich vellow 
carcass, good table bird. Mature early. 

3. The Wyandottes.. \A'hite, Columbian and Bufif. Per- 
haps the most popular breed in the country to-day. Prolific 
layers of brown eggs ; yellow skin and legs. A prime table 
fowl. A favorite on broiler plants. "Xo matter when you kill 
them, you've always got something." 

4. Plymouth Rocks. Barred and White. A close second 
to the Wyandottes in the race for popularity. A fancier's 
and a farmer's bird. The Barred Rock is known as the busi- 
ness hen. Hardy, large sized, prolific layers of brown eggs ; 
killed and dressed they make splendid poultry. 

5. Black Minorcas. A handsome showy bird of the Med- 
iterranean class. In size nearly equal to the Plymouth Rock. 
PTeaxy layers of large white eggs. Fair poultry. 

6. Black Langshans. A noble bird of the Asiatic class. 
Targe size, the cock weighing 10 pounds. Excellent table 



19 

fowl, the meat having a delicious flavor, and the bones being 
small. Lay a beautiful brown egg. 

7. The Orpingtons. Buff, Black and White. Large, stately- 
birds ; larger even than the Plymouth Rocks. Rightly handled 
they make excellent layers. Good table fowls. They would 
seem to have a great future. 

EXHIBITION POULTRY. 

Men who engage in poultry keeping as a side line are in a 
peculiarly favorable situation to take up the breeding of exhi- 
bition birds. As a general thing they have more money to 
spare for foundation stock and poultry appliances than the 
man who attempts to run a poultry farm. Then with their 
time and mind largely occupied with other things they turn to 
poultry keeping as a recreation, and do not become weary of 
the infinite details that make drudgery of the practical poultry- 
man's day. Consecpiently they give their stock better care. 
There are many who, if they realized the money there is in 
breeding exhibition birds, would make an attempt to get some 
of it. There are rich men who are willing to pay almost fabu- 
lous sums for birds that can win the blue ribbon at one of the 
large shows. And the market for such fowls is not confined to 
the limits of the United States, but is as wide as the world. 
George H. Northup of Raceville, N. Y., recently sold to Henry 
Schultz von Schultzenstein of Berlin, Prussia, two rose comb 
Black Minorca cocks for $500 and $1000 each respectively. The 
19 birds which he sold to this gentleman brought him in $3400. 
Mr. Northup gets $25 a sitting for eggs from his best pens. 
William Barry Owen of Vineyard Haven, Mass., has in his 
circular a list of 30 fowls, the value of which is $10,000. The 
leader of the list is a Black Orpington cock which won first 
New York, first Boston, 1906, first world's trophy. Crystal 
Palace. London. 1905, and is valued at $750. 

The record, however, was reached in March, 1908, when 
Madame Helena Paderewski of Morges, Switzerland, wife of 
the world-famous pianist, paid to Ernest Kellerstrass of Kan- 
sas City, Missouri, $7500 for five crystal strain White Orping- 
tons, the highest price ever paid for standard-bred birds since 
the world began. Mr. Kellerstrass refused $2500 for one hen, 
"Peggy," as it was named after his little girl, and, being a rich 
man, he did not need the money. 
. These of course are top-notch prices, and are paid only for 



20 

world-beaters, but $100 for a single bird and $10 a sitting for 
eggs are ever3'day occurrences. Even at one of the smaller 
shows a winner in one of the popular classes will bring from 
$25 to $50. The beauty of this branch of the business is that 
it does not require a large amount of land nor a large outlay 
for buildings, and a man who has skill in mating may grow a 
blue-ribbon winner in his back yard. 

THE PHILO SYSTEM. 

There are, as everybody knows, two systems of keeping 
fowls — the intensive and the extensive. The intensive makes 
the individual the unit and seeks to secure the largest profit 
possible from each hen ; the extensive makes the flock the unit 
and seeks to secure the profit from the aggregate of fowls 
rather than from the individual. The Philo System is the in- 
tensive system carried to a point that many would consider 
extreme. Six females and one male constitute a unit or flock. 
These little flocks are kept in houses which Mr. Philo describes 
in his book, each flock having a house of its own. There are 
two styles of these houses or coops, the standard and the 
economy. The standard coop is six feet long by three feet 
wide, and four feet high to the eaves. Above the eaves there 
is what Mr. Philo calls a "gable"- — a double-pitched roof, one 
side of which can be raised at will. This "gable" makes the 
extreme height of the house five feet. The standard coop has 
two stories — the roosts, nest boxes, feeding troughs, etc., 
being in the upper story. The "economy" coop is six feet 
long, three feet wide and two feet high. It has an adjustalile 
cover that can be raised or lowered at will, and fastened at an 
angle that will keep the rain or snow from entering the coop. 
It also has a sliding muslin frame which can be moved to the 
right or left, so that the fowls may be cared for without daily 
adjusting the roof in hot weather. 

After the fowls are installed in these coops the}' are not 
supposed to go outside. In the narrow limits at their com- 
mand they live and move and have their being. And singu- 
larly enough, they d<) well. They seem happy and contented 
and often respond with a large egg yield. Advocates of the 
system say that hens get their exercise by scratching, not by 
roaming, and that a hen can get just as much exercise in a 
six 1)y three coop as in a ten-acre lot. 

Advantages. — \^^^at are the advantages of the system? 
\\"hy are so manv enthusiastic over it? A\'h^' has Mr. Philo's 



21 

little book sold over a quarter of a million copies? The 
answer is very simple : The Philo system has made poultry 
keeping possible to thousands who otherwise could not engage 
in it. 

There are thousands li\ing' in cities who would like to keep 
hens, but who ha^•e hitherto lieen del^arred of the privilege 
because they had no suitable place. But with the Philo sys- 
tem anyone who has a back yard and a few feet of space may 
keep a little flock and supply themselves with fresh eggs, if 
nothing more. It costs little to make a start. Where one 
does his own work an "economy" coop may be knocked to- 
gether in an evening at a cost of two dollars for materials, 
and the hens may be as low-priced as one wishes. If one gets 
tired of the venture the hens may be sold or killed and the 
coop split up into firewood. In this case one has had a new 
and pleasant experience at little cost. 

Disadvantages. — And now what are the disadvantages of 
the system, the arguments against it? It recjuires a vast 
amount of work on the part of the poultry keeper, work that 
might Ije productive of far larger results. The time required 
to care for six hens and a cock under the Philo system would 
be as much as would be required to care for fifty hens in a 
larger house. And this work has to be done in the open air. 
It is delightful on a pleasant summer morning to go around 
among the little coops and look after their occupants ; Init in 
winter, when the mercury is at zero and a storm of sleet 
smites the face, it is not so fine. And even in the summer 
the system is not altogether a poem : lice multiply in the little 
coops with startling rapidity, and the poultryman has to be 
ever on the alert or his birds will be eaten up. 

And yet Mr. E. R. Philo has rendered a great service to 
the poultry fraternity : he has made it possible for thousands 
to engage in poultry keeping who without his book never 
would have made a start. 



CHAPTER III. 
Side Lines That Pay. 



While this book is written primarily from the standpoint 
of the poultry keeper, yet it is also written with the view of 
helping out that large class made up of those who have a little 
land who want to add a few hundred dollars a year to their 
income. Hens work in well with other things. They do not 
take all a man's time, not even all his spare time, unless he 
keeps enough to make a slave of himself.. In fact, it is often 
more profitable to combine hens with other things, even when 
but a small number are kept, than it is to depend upon the 
hens alone. They furnish a valuable fertilizer, which should 
be utilized ; and this suggests a garden. They enrich the soil 
of the yards where they are confined and keep down the 
•weeds; and this is favorable to the growth of berries and 
fruits. They consume by-products that would otherwise be 
wasted, and these by-products should be manufactured, if the 
feed bill is to be kept down. 

PIGEONS. 

Where a man is properly located there is no side line that 
will give him better returns than pigeon raising. I am aware 
that pigeon raising as a business enterprise is looked upon 
with suspicion by many, — such extravagant claims have been 
made for it by those who have stock to sell. And yet an 
acquaintance with the business has convinced me that where 
a man is well located with reference to markets, begins on a 
small scale and thoroughly masters the subject, gives his 
pigeons careful attention, there is no line in whicli there is 
such "easy money" as squab growing. 

To begin with, pigeons are much less care than hens : they 
look after themselves. In pigeon raising the most laborious 
and unsatisfactory part of the hen business is eliminated : the 
incubation and care of the young. There is no incubator to 
manage, no "moisture problem" to trouble one,' no fussy sit- 
ting hen to bother with, no brooder to look after. Pigeons 
build their own nests, hatch their own eggs, rear their own 
young, and take care of them until they are ready to be sent to 



23 



market or start in to housekeeping for themselves. If neces- 
sary, one can leave his pigeons all day, while he attends to 
other work, as there are no eggs to gather and the flock may 
be automatically fed. 

A pair of good-working Homer pigeons will rear from six. 
to eight broods of young ones in the course of a year, and I 
have known an unusually good pair to rear eleven broods. 
Squabs bring from 40 to 60 cents a pair in the Boston markets., 
according to the season. It is estimated that it costs 10 cents 
a month to feed a pair of Homers, and the old birds feed their 




Scene in the Pigeon Yard on a .luly morning— The Building where 

250 pigeons are housed cost but $50. It was 

originally a hen house. 

own young. Reckoning the price at which squabs may l)c' 
sold at the minimum, 40 cents a pair, and the increase eight 
])air a year, cost of feeding, $1.20, and we have a net profit of 
two dollars from each pair of working Homers. I know a 
successful business man who draws $50 a week from his busi- 
ness for personal expenses. This man engages in pigeon 
raising as a side line. And he. tells me that the money comes 
easier from his pigeons than it does from his business. 



24 

Any house that is adapted to poultry is adapted to pigeons. 
It is generally safe to allow five square feet of floor space for 
each pair, and not put over 25 pairs together in a pen. Be- 
sides the house space, pigeons need a flying pen, which should 
be at least twice as large on the ground as the breeding pen. 
The fl-\-ing pen should l)e eight or ten feet high, and should l)e 
rt)ofed with ])oultr}' wire as well as have poultry wire on the 
sides. 

The two secrets of successful pigeon raising are perfect 
sanitation and complete mating. Pigeons are subject to two 
serious diseases — canker and diarrhoea. Canker is a filth dis- 
ease, and diarrhoea is caused by improper or unseasonable 
diet. If the water for the daily bath is allowed to stand long 
enough to become polluted and the pigeons drink it, the germs 
of canker are introduced. And if care is not exercised in 
regard to diet, diarrhoea is likely to break out. 

Pigeons are generalh' given their feed in hoppers, and the 
standard ration is a mixture of red wheat and cracked corn — 
much more corn being fed in winter than in summer. Pigeons 
are also given peas, kafflr corn and pigeon feed. Grit and 
charcoal must be kept before them all the time and also plenty 
of oyster shells. Pigeons build their own nests (two boxes 
being ]:)rovided for each ])air), but must be furnished with 
nesting material — tobacco stems in summer and straw in 
winter. 

Squaljs are generally marketed when four weeks old. 
Their necks are wrung and they are shipped undressed. They 
are handled l)y commission merchants, who pav from 40 to 70 
■cents a pair for scjuabs weighing from to 10 pounds a dozen, 
according to the season of the year. Prices are at their lowest 
in June and Jul\' and at their highest in February and March. 

To realize the largest profits one needs a good summer 
market close at hand. In many places this market alreadv 
exists, and in nearly every place of any size it may be created. 
The consumption of squabs is likely to largely increase in the 
future, and there does not seem to be any danger that the 
business will be overdone. 

Pigeon raisers may add considerably to their profits by 
selling birds for breeding purposes. Pigeon raising is a new 
business in most localities, and its picturesqueness and pos- 
sible profitableness make a strong appeal to many. Scores 
start in with a fcAv birds in every village everv vear, only to 
abandon the enterprise in a few weeks or months, and these 



25 

beginners make good customers for stock. In pigeon raising, 
as in everything else, it is the man who stays with the business 
who succeeds. 

DLTKS. 

The pr()htal)leness of duck culture is not preached so 
assiduously as it was a few years ago, but where a man's place 
is adapted to it and where he is well located as regards mar- 
kets, he may, as in the case of pigeons, embark in it to advan- 
tage. Ducklings are easier to raise than chicks, grow faster, 
are unmolested by vermin and are not subject to disease. 
They are easily confined — a two-foot wire fence will keep 
them enclosed. ^^ hile a stream or ]")ond is an advantage in 
raising ducks, yet some successful duck raisers grow them 
without this accessory. They need plenty of water to drink 
and to rinse their faces in, but more than this is not needed. 
In the case of ducks, besides the eggs and meat, there is an- 
other source of revenue — the feathers. 

POULTRY KEEPINCx AND GENERAL FAR^IING. 

As a matter of fact, three-fourths of the eggs i:)roduced in 
the L^nited States are produced on farms, where poultry keep- 
ing is a side line. Hens pay on the farm, there is no doubt of 
tliat, but it is a question whether it would pay a man to com- 
bine pr)ultr}' keeping on a large scale with general farming. 
Hens pay on the farm because they are allowed to shift for 
themseh'es and pick U]) a great i)art of their own living. 
Fifty hens may range at will and not be a nuisance, but five 
hundred hens roaming at large would be as destructive as a 
Kansas cyclone. If a man kee])s fi^'e hundred hens he must 
house them, }ard them, feed them, and devote consideral)le 
time to their care. It is a question whether this time may not 
l)e more profitably spent in regular farm work. Other things 
l)eing ec|ual, it does not pay a man to disturb a routine he has 
established and which is reasonably profitable to tr\- a new 
thing. 

MARKET GARDENING. 

Where sr)il and site are favorable poultry keeping works 
in well with market gardening. Summer, which is the market 
gardener's busy season, is the time when the poultryman's 
duties are light. The poultryman has at his command a large 
amount of stimulating manure, which is just the thing tor 



26 

early crops. It is surprising", too. what a demand there is for 
early vegetables, e\en in countr}- towns. Marketmen will tell 
you that they cannot begin to supply the demand from the 
local growers, but ha\e to send away for a great part of their 
stuff. If a man has a small greenhouse he can add largely 
to his profits, and even with two or three hot l)eils can force 
the season. Asparagus, early peas, string beans, green corn, 
cucumbers, radishes, lettuce, beets, etc., are monev makers 
not to be despised. The beauty of market gardening is that 
there is no long w^ait — a man gets returns from his investment 
at once. 

STRAWBERRIES. 

Probably the ideal combination, where conditi()ns are fa- 
vorable, is poultry keeping and strawberry growing. Straw- 
berries are the one berry of which people cannot get enough. 
It is surprising how many boxes the market will absorb. In 
the little town in which I live I have known one dealer to sell 
250 boxes a day. In order to grow strawberries to advantage 
three things are needed : rich, moist land, clean culture, plenty 
of cheap help in the picking time. By a suitable selection of 
varieties the fruiting season may be extended to full four 
w'eeks. For New England the following varieties are recom- 
mended : Early — Fairfield. Senator Dunlap. Virginia; mid- 
season — Sample, Glen Mary, Abington, Brandywine, Alinute- 
man. Parson's Beauty ; late — Stevens' Late Champion ; latest — 
Rear Guard. 

For growing on light soil, Minuteman and Haverland pol- 
lenized wath Meade or Senator Dunlap ; for medium to heavy 
soil, Sample pollenized with either Brandywine. Abington, 
Parson's Beauty or Senator Dunlap ; Glen Mary. The latter 
variety may be planted alone if desired. Plant new varieties 
in a small way, or better still, allow the experiment stations 
to test them for you. 

The grower of strawberries may add considerable to his 
income by the sale of plants. There are many in every com- 
munity who have their own strawberry bed. They are accus- 
tomed to send away for plants, but will buy at home if they 
can get what they want. One cannot get as large prices for 
plants sold around home as he could if he advertised and got 
out a catalogue ; but half a cent a plant for the common varie- 
ties and a cent a plant for the newer ones will pay a man well. 
The question arises in this connection. If I sell ])lants do I not 
create competitors who w-ill cut into my berrv business? It 



27 

is the experience of strawberry growers that the sale of plants 
does not injure the berry trade. New varieties are coming 
out all the time. If a man has a reputation for growing good 
stufif his customers will stick to him. The way to succeed is 
to do things a little better and a little different from the other 
fellow, and then let the public know it. 

RASPBERRIES, BLACKBERRIES AND CURRANTS. 

The grower of strawberries will be likel}' to add "bush 
fruits," as they are called, to his collection. Raspberries and 
blackberries are not so satisfactory to handle as strawberries, 
as it is more difficult to keep them under control ; but where a 
plantation is well established it is profitable. Raspberries 
especially pay well, as the demand is good and the price high. 
The raspberry grower has a clearer field for his wares than the 
strawberry grower, for owing to the soft and fleshy nature of 
the fruit it does not stand shipment well and the demand must 
be supplied from near home. Currants also have a limited 
sale, and owing to their extraordinary productiveness are 
profitable. In raspberries the money making varieties are the 
Kansas and Cuthbert ; in blackberries, the Snyder ; in currants. 
Red Cross, AA'ilder or Cherry. 

PEACHES AND PLUMS. 

These do not yield so Cjuick returns as vegetables, berries 
and bush fruits ; but when the orchard is established, the work 
is less and the profits large. The poultryman who plants 
peaches and plums in his garden has the great advantage of 
using his land for a double purpose. Peaches are profitable 
in the peach belt, but when one gets out of the region where 
they grow naturally, it does not pay to bother with them 
Plums are hardier and are adapted to a wider range of terri- 
tory. 

Any land that will grow good corn will grow peaches and 
plums. Some set the trees in holes dug for the purpose, 
but I get better results by plowing the land and growing the 
trees the first year or two among hoed crops. In buying trees 
get them as near home as possible. They will be more likely 
to live, as they can be set immediately upon being dug up, and 
the price is less. One should not pay over 10 or 15 cents for 
trees suitable to set out. 

This book is written for the latitude of southeastern New 
England, and all varieties mentioned in this chapter are the 
ones adapted for money-making here. Other parts of the 



• 28 

•countn- will perhaps require a different selection. I would 
ad^•ise the reader to write to the pomolog-ist of his State 
experiment station for a list of trees and fruits best adapted 
to his localit}'. For my section the best varieties are as fol- 
lows : Peaches — Greensboro, W'addell, Carman, Champion 
(delicious late peach). Elberta. Crosby (the best yellow peach 
known) ; plums — Red June, Abundance, Satsuma (superb for 
canning). 

BROODER BROKE CHICKS. 

There is a fine field in every community for one or two 
young men or women to make good money hatching out 
chicks for their neighbors. They should be equipped so that 
they can supply eggs from their own flocks from two or three 
standard varieties, and also be ready to hatch eggs that may 
be furnished them. The price of day-old chicks is about 15 
cents for the standard \arieties, and at this price there is good 
money in it. 

The fireless brooder is the greatest discovery in the poultry 
world in the last five years. The fireless brooder makes it 
possible to raise chicks without danger or expense. A man 
running fireless brooders can go to bed at night with the com- 
forting assurance that his chicken house will not be likely to 
burn down l-jcfore morning. The cost (jf these brooders is so 
slight that they can be burned up at the end of the season and 
new ones installed the following year. 

The great objection to the fireless brooder is that for two 
or three days one has to practically live with the chicks. 
After the chicks become "brooder broke" it is no more trouble 
to run a fireless brooder than one of the combustible kind. 
Now I am coming round to the point of this article : It would 
be a great advance and a great advantage to buyer and seller 
alike if chicks could be sold "brooder broke" rather than right 
out of the incubator. It would be a great advantage to the 
purchaser because it would materially reduce his labors, and 
it would be of great advantage to the seller because it would 
almost double his profits. Many a man who pays 15 cents 
apiece for day-old chicks would pay 25 cents each for chicks 
that had been brooder broke. And where a young man or 
woman is making a business of getting out chicks, they might 
as well put in a little more time and take the added profit. 



CHAPTER IV. 



Houses and Yards. 



One of the greatest prol^lems that confronts the poultry- 
man is the location and construction of his plant. It is here 
that more men meet their Waterlc^o than anywhere else. I 
have visited many of the leading breeders of the East, and 
before coming away have asked this question: "If you were 
starting anew would vou build and locate yt^ur houses just as 
they are now?" And in nearly every case, I think, the answer 
has been, "Xo." The man has gone on and suggested modi- 
fications and improvements that I could see would be of great 
advantage. 

It is ni}- ]:)urpose in this chapter to describe two poultry 
houses — one for layers and one for young stock — such as I 
have demonstrated in my own experience to be practical and 
economical. Indeed. I do not see how either of them can be 
improved. If a man will think out his plant in advance and 
determine where he will build if his business grows, and then 
begin with one laying house and two of the smaller houses, 
he will make no mistake, l)Ut will be in a position to advance 
from year to year. 

LAYING HOUvSE. 

There seems to be a tendency on the part of poultrymen 
to-day to larger flocks. There was a time not so long ago- 
when it was believed that twelve or fifteen birds were all that 
should be kept together where the maximum egg product 
was desired. It has been found, however, that fowls may be 
kej^t together in anv number u]) to fift}' with good results, 
provided they are given ample room and their quarters are 
kept clean and sanitary. It would seem to be good judgment, 
therefore, to build a house sufficiently large to accommodate 
50 laying hens, and to make this number the unit in one's 
calculations. Fifty hens in one f^ock may be cared for as 
easilv as 15. They require but one feed hopper, one drinking 
dish, one box with grit and oyster shells, one dust bath, and 
may all be fed their grain ration at the same time. A 50-hen 
house, therefore, is our first consideration. 



30 

The house shown in the picture is 24 feet long and 12 
feet deep, 7 feet high in front and 4^^ feet high in the rear. 
The foundation is of concrete, made by mixing two parts sand 
and three parts good bank gravel with one part Portland 
cement. This wall rests on a footing of rocks, filling a trench 
three feet deep. In excavating for a trench always be sure to 
go below the frost line, so that the water that seeps into it in 
the winter may soak into the ground. The house has a dirt 
floor. 

In the construction of the frame 2x 4 joists are used. The 
sills are 4 x 4, but no other heavy timber is employed. The 
uprights are placed three feet apart, and the roof timbers 30 
inches. The frame is covered with pine or hemlock boards, 
and there is a dirt floor. 

The roof is double pitch, with one side much longer than 
the other. The rafters in the short pitch are 3 feet long and 
those in the long pitch 10 feet. The distance from the floor 
to the highest point of the roof is a little over 8 feet. 

The house faces south, as all poultry houses should. There 
are in front two windows of glass, each light 9 x 12. These 
windows are made in one piece and are what is known in the 
East as "storm windows." They are screwed to the frames 
and are not intended to be removed. There is also one of 
these glass windows in the east end. This gives a splendid 
■distribution of light, and the house has sunshine all the day 
long. The windows are set 20 inches from the floor. Besides 
the glass Avindows there are two windows for the admission 
of fresh air, each 4 feet long by 3 feet high. These windows 
are covered on the outside with poultry wire, and on the 
inside there are frames made of 3-inch stufif and covered with 
10-ounce duck. These frames are so arranged that they may 
be swung up and fastened to the roof during the day and 
closed and buttoned at night, or in stormy weather. As a 
matter of fact, for eight months in the year the frames are 
fastened to the roof and are not let down at all. The reader 
will perceiA"e that I believe in plenty of fresh air for hens. 

The arrangement of the interior is very simple. There is 
a roost platform 16 feet long and 3y2 feet wide on the back 
side. This platform is 2>2 feet from the floor, and the perches 
are eight inches above it. The platform is boarded in at the 
west end, and if one desires he can arrange a curtain to drop 
down in front of the birds when they have gone to roost at 
iiisfht. 



3] 



5' 

■TO 



c 





c 




32 

Iviinniiig- along' the west end of the liouse is a platform 18 
inches hig'h and 24 inches wide. This ]jlatform is for the 
nests. Formerly 1 placed the nests under the roost platform, 
as is commonly the case, luit this required so much stooping 
and pulling out of nests to gather the eggs that I decided 
to introduce a nest platform, and find it a great con\enience. 
The nests are up off the floor, out of the way, and are easily 
accessihle to both the laying hen and the owner. 

The only other furniture in the house is two shelves six 
inches from the floor, one for the grit and shell box and the 
other for the feed hopper. Tt will be seen that e\ery inch of 
floor space is available for scratching and exercise. 

The sides and ends of the house are covered with Xeponset 
roofing, painted soon after l^eing ])ut on. and the rcjof is 
shingled. A saving in cost might be effected by covering the 
roof with Xeponset, painting it, and then in a few years after, 
when the Xeponset begins to wear throtigh, putting on 
shingles. I have tried many things, but I have never found 
anything so good as shingles for a roof. X'^ext to shingles I 
put Paroid, which is easy to apply and will last for years. 

The cost of this house, exclusive of labor, is about $60. 
It will cost more in localities where lumber is high. 

HOUSE FOR YOUXG STOCK. 

Besides houses for his la_\ing hens, every poultr\man needs 
a number of houses for his young stock. As a general thing 
these houses are quite cheaply constructed, and I ha\e known 
a breeder to rear prize winners in old i)iano l)oxes. Hut 
where a man is not too greatly cram])ed for means, it will pay 
him to put up good, substantial buildings for his Aoung stock. 
They will last longer and be more satisfactorv. There is a 
time in the fall when every breeder is crowded for room, and 
these houses which I am about to describe will come in handy 
for su])plementary (|uarters. 

The houses for young stock are each 12 feet long by 8 
feet wide, 7j^ feet in front by 5 feet in the rear. The sills, 
])lates, rafters, studs and floor timliers are all of 2x4 stuff", and 
I ]mt in enough to make a stiff' frame. 

The floor is double, and is made of boards. The roof is 
single slope or shed roof, as it is called. 

The foundation for the house is made of old railroad ties. 
Instead of setting the ties in the ground, as is the case with 
many poultry houses, the ties are sawed into sections 16 inches 
long and laid down upon the grass and the sills laid upon 



33 




34 

them. For a lig-ht house this answers all right. It also 
makes it convenient when one wishes to move the house from 
time to time to get it on new soil. 

The house is covered with Neponset put on over sheathing 
paper, and the roof is covered with Paroid. Both sides and 
roof are kept carefully painted to protect the paper. 

I ought to have added to my description of the laying 
liouse that I use some kind of lining or sheathing paper under 
the Neponset siding. One cannot have a poultry house too 
wind proof and free from draughts. 

In the house for young stock there is no glass window in 
front, but its place is taken by an open window, 4 feet by 4, 
divided into two parts by a joist or scantling. This window is 
co\ered wnth poultry wire and is fitted with a curtain which 
is tacked to a frame. The frame is fastened to the upper 
joist l)y three back-flap hinges and the greater part of the 
time is swung up and hooked to the roof. As the house is 
used principally in warm weather, the curtain is kept hooked 
lip the greater part iDf the time, and is only let down and 
fastened during a storm. 

The frame for the curtain is of three-inch boards, with a 
support running down the center. As the house is not in- 
tended to be used in the very coldest weather, the covering 
ior the frame is not of duck, but of cotton cloth. 

As the house would be somewhat dark with the curtain 
down, if there were no other means of admitting light, I have 
inserted a single window in each end. The windows are what 
are known as cellar windows and have three lights each, the 
squares of glass being 10 by 12 inches ; they cost 50 cents 
apiece. 

The following is an estimate of the materials required : 
Hemlock boards, 564 feet : spruce joists, 2x4. 218 running feet; 
spruce joists, 2x3 (roosts), 24 running feet: matched pine for 
doors. 20 feet ; finish, 3-inch, 60 feet ; finish, 4-inch. 60 feet ; 
Xe])onset roofing, 250 feet : sheathing paper, 250 feet ; Paroid. 
110 feet. Two small windows for ends, hardware, sheeting, 
etc. The cost of this house, where a man does his L)wn work, 
is not far from $25. 

I make use of these houses from March up to about 
Christmas. After the }-oung stock is remo\'ed from them in 
the fall or early winter, they are thoroughly cleaned and dis- 
infected, and the floor is covered with fine gravel or sand. 
The house is then allowed to rest until needed for the chicks 



35 

in the spring. When taken from the incubator they are put 
into these houses, 50 to a house. When the chicks are six or 
eight weeks old, the brooder is removed, but the chicks are 
allowed to remain. When they are 8 or 10 weeks old, low 
perches or roosts are introduced, and the chicks encouraged 
to use them. When the cockerels get old enough to begin 
to pay attention to the other sex, they are separated from 
the pullets and put in houses by themselves. 

The pullets are allowed to remain in their houses until 
they begin to lay, when they are removed to their permanent 
quarters in the laying house. Sometimes, however, when I 
am crowded for room, the pullets are allowed to stay longer, 
even up to Christmas. But I like to get them into the laying 
house as soon as they begin to lay, for any interference with 
a laying hen has a tendency to check egg production. 

YARDS. 

In my opinion too much space is often given to yards, and 
valuable land devoted to the purpose which could be better 
utilized in growing crops. Unless the yard is large enough 
to maintain a stand of grass in spite of the depredations of the 
fowls, there is no particular need of going to the expense of 
wiring in a large space ; for if you have watched hens in con- 
finement you have doubtless noticed that they restrict them- 
selves to a comparatively small area. They need a place for 
dusting, for exercise, for outdoor enjoyment, but it need not 
be large. 

Shade is a necessity in the 3ards, and if it is not provided 
naturally it must be artificially. Remember that it is in the 
hot season of the year that the hens are outdoors, and they 
need protection from the fierce heat of the sun. An apple 
orchard or a grove of standing timber makes an ideal yard. 
If there is no shade and trees are to be planted for the pur- 
pose, plum and peach should be given the preference, for they 
grow faster than the apple and give good results. 

Yards should run to the rear of the houses, and not to the 
front. Where yards run to the rear each house is directly 
accessible, and one does not have to open and shut half a 
dozen gates and penetrate a labyrinth of yards to get where 
he wants to go. I believe that I was the first writer on poul- 
try topics to advocate running the yards to the rear, but now 
many are falling into line with me. 

Formerly it was the custom to run a bottom board along 



36 

the ground, from post to post, to nail the wire to, and also to 
crown the fence with a top rail ; but this practice is no longer 
followed. It is made unnecessary by the fact that wire is now 
manufactured with horizontal strands running the whole 
length, and with meshes smaller at the bottom than at the top. 
This wire does not sag or buckle and follows the contour of 
the land. 

Posts should be planted one rod apart. Aside from the 
corner posts, which are subjected to considerable strain, large 
posts are not needed. Small, cheap posts, which can easily 
be inserted in the ground by means of a bar and sledge, are as 
good or better than expensive posts of cedar or chestnut. 
Young pines that have died on the stump from too close 
crowding, make excellent posts, and may be bought for about 
five cents each. Removing the bark and dipping them in hot 
creosote up to about six inches above their ground line 
greatly increases their durability. It does not pay to spend 
much time and money upon the construction of the yards, for 
the wire should be removed every few years and the ground 
ploughed up and planted to renovate it. 



i 



CHAPTER V. 



Incubation and Brooding. 

It is still a debatable question whether on a small plant 
it pays to install an incubator or not. There is something to 
be said on both sides. Where one uses a machine he has 
things his own way. He does not have to wait for the incu- 
bator to get brood}', and need have no fear that it will break 
eggs or quit before the chickens are hatched. On the other 
hand, not every man can afiford to lock up good money in a 
machine that is to be used only three months in a year. Then, 
too, an incubator is not a toy for a child to play with, but a 
machine with delicate adjustments; and for best results one 
needs good judgment, experience and to be something of a 
mechanic. On a large plant incubators are indispensable, 
but on a small plant it is possible to get along without them. 
Still, as a man's business grows he will naturally turn to 
artificial incubation and brooding, and in what follows may 
find suggestions of great value. 



'tote' 



SELECTING AN INCUBATOR. 

I receive many letters in the course of a year from persons 
who wish to know what is the best make of incubator. In 
reply I tell them I do not know, but can tell them the name 
of the one I run. I suppose there is no best. There are a 
dozen incubators on the market, any one of which will do 
good work. "It is the man behind the gun,' we used to say 
during our war with Spain ; and it is the man behind the 
incubator who is responsible for success or failure. The man 
who gets a 90 per cent hatch with one machine could prob- 
ably duplicate it with another if he should try. 

The best size for a machine is probably somewhere about 
200 eggs. A 50 per cent hatch is regarded as a good one for 
an incubator. This will g'we a man 100 chicks at a run. If 
he wants fewer he can put in fewer eggs, and if he wants 
more he ca-n get another machine. A 200-egg incubator may 
be run with 100 eggs, but a 100-egg machine cannot be run 
with 200. It takes little more oil, if any, for a 200-egg incu- 
1)atnr than for a smaller one, no more time to attend it, and 



38 

the 200-egg' machine is generally more satisfactory. On the 
other hand should the hatch go wrong, as will sometimes 
happen, 200 eggs are enough to spoil; and for this reason I 
do not recommend the purchase of extra large machines. 
The 200-egg incubator is the standard. 

FOLLOW INSTRUCTIONS CLOSELY. 

Accompanying each machine as it comes from the factory 
is an illustrated chart showing how to set it up and a book of 
directions for operating it. Follow the instructions closely. 
It's a dif^cult thing to beat a man at his own game, and the 
incubator makers have been at it for years. They are more 
anxious to have you succeed than you are yourself, for suc- 
cess means that you tell your friends about their machine and 
so influence future buyers. They ought to know their own 
machine. Set the incubator where the temperature is the 
most uniform, least subject to variations. A cellar is the best 
or the worst place. A cellar that is moderately moist and 
contains no artificial heating apparatus is the best place for 
an incubator, and a cellar with a heater or furnace about the 
worst. After you get the incubator adjusted run it two or 
three days before putting in the eggs. 

SOME INCUBATOR CAUTIONS. 

You will trim and fill your lamp once a day and turn the 
eggs twice ; but after doing these things the less you touch 
your incubator or go near it the better. There is a weird 
fascination about an incubator, and one can hardly leave it 
alone. But the less you monkey with it the better. This is 
especially true in hatching time. The thermometer will do 
all kinds of stunts, and you will be tempted to keep your hand 
on the regulator. But if the incubator has been running well 
through the hatch, let it alone. After the eggs are through 
hatching it may be well to open the door and quickly remove 
the egg trays. This will give you a better chance to see the 
chicks and will give them more room. 

The thermostat may need slight adjustment several 
times during the hatch. The best way to see the thermometer 
is to use an egg tester to flash light into the machine. This 
should be done every morning and night before you turn the 



^9 

INvSURAXCE. 

Before you start in to run an incubator in your house 
secure a written permit from your insurance agent to do so. 
There is xerv little danger of fire from an incubator, and the 
company would probably indemnify you even if there were 
no such addenda to 3'our policy. Rut it is better to be safe 
than to be sorry. Most companies grant such a permit upon 
application, while a few refuse to do so. If you are insured 
in a company of the latter kind the onl}- thing- to do is to sur- 
render }'our ])olic}' and take out another in a more progressive 
concern. 

TEvSTING THE EGGS. 

Eggs should be tested at the end of the seventh and again 
at the end of the fourteenth day. In the first test all infertile 
eggs should be removed. These may be told by the fact that 
they are perfectly clear, while the fertile eggs show a dark 
spot from which radiate red, spidery lines. An air cell also 
has begun to form. In the second test it will be found that 
some of the germs that began to develop have died, and these 
eggs should be taken out. A little practice will soon enable 
one to distinguish a fertile from an infertile egg, and to tell 
whether the egg is incubating satisfactorily or not. 

THE MOISTURE PROBLEM. 

Why is it that the best incubator made will seldom hatch 
as large a per cent of the eggs as a hen? The common idea 
is, lack of moisture. Incubator manufacturers say otherwise. 
They say that the air constantly circulating around the eggs. 
supplies moisture, and that no artificial moisture is necessary^ 
I said just a moment ago that the reader should follow the 
instructions of the manufacturer carefully and not think he 
can beat a man at his own game. But in the matter of 
moisture I am inclined to make an exception^ — 1 believe there 
are times when moisture may be supplied to advantage. 

A certain amount of evaporation is necessarv from ilie 
egg. whether in an incubator or under a hen. or tlie air cell 
will not form, and the chick will die. But if evaporation is. 
too great the chick becomes weak and shrunken and the mem- 
brane inside the shell tough and leathery, so that when the: 
period of incubation is completed the chick cannot extrude 
itself. The problem, therefore, is to keep the air cell the right 
size. A good way for the beginner is to set some eggs under 



40 

a hen at the same time he starts his incubator, and whenever 
he tests the eggs in the incubator to test those under the hen. 
If the air cell in both cases is the same size, the moisture 
problem is taking care of itself. But if the air space in the 
€ggs in the incubator is much larger than the air space in the 
eggs under the hen, evaporation is too rapid and should be 
checked. Aloisture may be supplied by means of water in 
shallow pans set under the egg trays, by a wet sponge intro- 
duced into the incubator, by shallow boxes filled with wet 
sand, or by sprinkling the eggs with water of the temperature 
of 95 degrees. 

VENTILATION. 

Closely connected with the subject of moisture is the 
subject of ventilation. During the first four days of incuba- 
tion the germ will develop with very little ventilation. After 
the fourth da}' the air cell begins to form, and then more 
ventilation is necessary ; on the seA'enth day the germ recptires 
treatment according to local conditions ; in cold weather, more 
heat and less ventilation ; in warm weather, less heat and 
more ventilation. At an altitude of 500 or 1000 feet, more 
ventilation ; at an altitude of 4000 feet or more, less ventila- 
tion. In extremely dry weather or in a high altitude, about 
the same quantit}' of ventilation is required the third week 
as during the second. 

REMOVING CHICKS TO THE BROODER. 

Chicks may be allowed to remain in the incubator for 24 
hours after the last one has come out ; they should then be 
removed to the brooder. Meanwhile the brooder should have 
been got in readiness. If it has been used before it should 
be washed out thoroughly with warm water and carbolic acid 
soap. The lamp should be cleaned and the burner boiled out. 
A new wick should be put in. After the brooder has dried out 
carpet the floor with half an inch of sand or soft earth and 
then start the lamp. The brooder should be thoroughly 
warmed up before the chicks are put in. 

The temperature under the hover should be 95 when the 
chicks are introduced, and should be kept at 95 the first week. 
Then it may be reduced a degree a day until it gets down 
to 70. Some men use no thermometer, but can tell whether 
the temperature is right by the action of the chicks ; if they 
bunch together they need more heat; if they spread out and 
appear contented the temperature is right. 



41 

MANAGEMENT AND CARE OF BROODER CHICKS. 

Brooder chicks come out from one to three months earlier 
than chicks raised in the natural way, and consequently the 
mortality among- them is likely to be greater. The brooder 
itself should be kept clean. Every few days the litter should 
be removed and replaced with fresh sand or earth. The 
chicks should l)e given as much liberty as is consistent with 
safety. They should be let out of the brooders into the 
brooder house. It will be necessary to make a little fence 
of boards around the brooder for the first day or two after 
they are let out, and to guide the little things back into their 
house when they begin to show signs of being cold. But they 
soon learn. And in a short time they may be allowed to go 
in and out at their own free will. 

It is a good plan to keep the floor of the brooder house 
covered with sand or earth, and to sprinkle it from time to 
time. There is such a thing as having the brooder house too 
dry. Mother Earth has a natural moisture which must be 
reproduced in the brooder house if the chicks are to do their 
best. Not over 50 chicks should be put together. 

HOW TO FEED. 

The chicken business has been relieved of much of its 
drudgery by the introduction of the dry feeding method. 
The poultryman throws in a few handfuls of chick feed four 
or five times a day, and the chicks do the rest. But there is 
room for a few suggestions even here. Chicks need vege- 
tables to balance the grains of which the chick feed is com- 
posed. A blood beet cut in two or a mangel will be eagerly 
attacked. The heart of a cabbage is good. Onions chopped 
fine are relished. A handful of beef scraps scattered over the 
floor once a day will be found and devoured. It is a good 
rule never to give little chicks more chick feed or cracked corn 
at a time than they will eat up clean. 

I find it a good plan after the chicks are three weeks old 
to keep before them all the time a mixture made up as follows : 
Bran. t\yo parts; ground alfalfa, two parts; bone meal, one 
part ; a little salt, a little charcoal. This is fed dry, and is in 
addition to the chick feed and vegetables. I also ought to 
add that I keep clean, cool water before my chicks from the 
very start. 

When my chicks are six weeks or two months old then I 
let them out into their yards. From now on I use the hopper 



42 

system of feeding, and keep feed before them all the time. 
In one compartment of the hopper is a dry mash made as 
follows : Two parts ground alfalfa, two parts mixed feed, one 
part beef scraps, a little salt, a little charcoal. The ingre- 
dients are compounded by bulk rather than by weight. In 
the other compartment of the hopper I keep cracked corn. In 
their yards the chicks find grass, bugs, worms, and later in 
the season apples, peaches and plums. As soon as practicable 
I separate the sexes, and always aim to keep chicks of the 
same size together. 

BARTON BROODER SYSTEM. 

Where one desires to get out chicks earh' and in large 
numbers, something like a brooder system is necessary. 
Brooders such as are sold on the market do not do their best 
work with the thermometer at zero ; they are intended for a 
milder temperature. When used in mid-winter they need to 
be kept in a house in which there is a fire. Consequently on 
large plants where extra early chickens are wanted, they are 
generally raised in large brooder houses in which the pipe 
system has been installed. But this is expensive. Xot every 
man feels capable of running a steam heater. Under the pipe 
system the mortality is likely to be large at best, and in case 
of an accident a man may see all the chickens he has on hand 
perish in a few hours. A system less expensive than the pipe 
system and where the unit is the individual brooder would 
seem to be what is wanted in the poultry world. 

My friend. Mr. O. P. Barton of Seabrook. X. H., has de- 
vised such a system, and when its merits are known it is 
likely to supersede all others. A description of this system 
will be worth many times the price of this book to anyone 
interested in artificial incubation and brooding. 

Mr. Barton has lately built a new brooding house in which 
his ideas are more fully worked out than in previous ones, and 
I feel that I can best explain the system by describing the new 
brooder house both outside and inside. 

The brooder house shown in the cut is 16x40 feet, and 
runs north and south. It has five-foot posts, and the height 
from the sill to the apex of the double roof is 10 feet. The 
sills are of 4x6 stufif, but all the studding, plates, rafters, etc., 
are 2x4. The floor is of earth. The building is covered on 
the roof, sides and ends with a patent roofing. 

What impresses one most about the building when he sees 



43 




44 

it for the first time is the number of windows. I don't know 
whether Mr. Barton is a member of the Masonic fraternity or 
not, but he certainly believes in light. "There is nothing so 
good for chicks as sunshine," he says. There are 19 windows 
in the house, if I have counted right — four on each side, four 
on each side of the roof, two in front, and one in the rear. 
The side windows are half windows, each with six panes 
10x18; the roof' windows are each four feet ten inches long by 
two feet eight inches wide ; the front and rear windows are 
also of generous size. 

Opening the door in the south end one steps inside, and 
if the season is winter the transformation is remarkable, for 
we are in a place where sunshine, warmth and life hold car- 
nival. Running the whole length of the house is a central 
walk or aisle, ~a little over five feet wide. At the north end 
there is a stove, in which, however, fire is kept only in the 
most Arctic weather. On both sides of the aisle there are two 
tiers of shelves, which make one think of the bunks in a log- 
ging camp, or, better, the exhibition pens at a poultry show. 
These shelves are divided into compartments, each containing 
53 1-3 square feet. Each compartment is 10 feet long and five 
feet four inches wide. Each compartment has a board floor 
and is enclosed by a wire frame or fence two feet high, so 
arranged that it can be raised or lowered at will. When in 
place the fence is secured by wooden buttons. 

There are four of these pens or compartments in each 
tier, and as there are two tiers on each side, there are 16 pens 
in all. As each pen will hold comfortably 50 chicks, the 
capacity of the house is therefore 800 chicks. But as it is not 
intended to hold the chicks more than six weeks it can be 
used two or three times in a season. Mr. Barton estimates 
that in a house like this he can brood 2400 chicks from Januar\- 
to July. 

The hovers themselves are of the very simplest construc- 
tion. Those in the upper pens are two feet three inches 
square, and those in the lower pens two feet six inches. They 
are made of narrow matched boards, beaded and mortised 
together, and are set on wooden legs — those in the upper pen 
five inches high and those in the lower six inches. The cur- 
tain is of thin oilcloth. Mr. Barton uses a double curtain, or 
rather two curtains, so arranged that the flaps "break joints," 
so as to retain as much warmth as possible under the hover. 

Heat comes from a lamp set on a little shelf directly under 



45 

the. center of the hover. The shelf is secured by iron straps 
running from the shelf to the floor above. The lamp is an 
incubator lamp with an "indestructible" glass chimney. 

Above the chimney a circular hole is cut in the floor of 
the brooding compartment, four and a half inches in diameter, 
and this hole comes under the exact center of the hover. This 
hole is protected by a tin collar, which projects an inch or 
two above and below the floor of the compartment. Above 
the tin is a circular chimney or heater made of fine meshed 
wire and extending upward to within an inch of the roof of 
the hover. Above this a tin plate is tacked to the hover to 
protect the wood from too great heat. 

Chicks are taken from the incubator and placed in these 
compartments, and in a surprisingly short time they learn 
how to adapt themselves to their surroundings. Mr. Barton 
uses no thermometer, but turns on more or less heat accord- 
ing to the weather. At first it seemed to me a mistake to use 
no thermometer, but now I have thought it out I can see why 
none is needed. The heat under the hover must vary in 
degree according to the distance from the chimney or heater, 
being considerably greater near the center than at the edges. 
Unlike other hovers that I know anything about, the center 
of the hover is the lightest part, and this naturally attracts the 
chick as he seeks shelter. As he becomes warm he retires 
further back, and in this way is always able to find a tem- 
perature that suits his needs. 

It will be seen that this brooder of Mr. Barton's violates 
several principles that have been considered well established. 
The fumes of the lamp pass directly up into the hover, but 
the chicks seem to sufifer no ill efifects from them. Indeed a 
healthier or happier set of youngsters it would be hard to find. 
I know many men who have made a study of artificial incu- 
bation, but I never met a man who can get such a growth 
on chicks in a given time as Mr. Barton. 

The cost of the brooder house and equipment described 
here was $150, but it is doubtful if it could be duplicated 
under $200. But even at $200 it is the cheapest and most 
practical brooder system that the writer knows anything 
about. 

HATCHING BY HENS. 

The sitting hen should have a quiet, sequestered place 
where she can spend the time of her confinement, and be 



46 




47 

made as comfortable as possible. The best place is a room 
devoted entirely to the purpose. This room should be scru- 
pulously clean ; the walls should be whitewashed, the cob- 
Avebs swept down, and there should be good ventilation. In 
the center of the room there should be a commodious dust 
bath, and a dish of water should be always accessible. There 
should be a hopper somewhere in the room, one compartment 
filled with whole corn and the other with good sharp grit. 

Procure of your grocer as many boxes or crates as you 
expect to have sitters, and let these crates or boxes all be 
of the same size, if possible. Set them on the floor, close to 
the walls of the room, side by side. Take a strip of two-inch 
"furring" and nail it to the joists back of the boxes at a height 
two feet from the floor. Take another strip and run it parallel 
with the first, but two feet or so from it, nailing the ends to 
the studding or uprights. Brace this second strip of "furring" 
in the middle by a strip running to the floor. You now have 
a long, narrow frame of wood above your nest boxes. On 
this frame tack "shorts" bags or strips of burlap, so that a 
roof is formed above the setters, and let the "shorts" bags 
hang down until they reach the top of the nest boxes. You 
have now covered the boxes with a canopy such as used to be 
erected over an old-fashioned bed, and shut up the sitters in 
semi-darkness. They are much more contented and sit better 
than in the bright sunlight. This frame or canopy may be 
continued all around the room, and as many as fifty hens may 
be set in a room twelve feet square. 

Care of the Sitters. — The hens that are intended to be used 
for sitters should be taken off the nests at night and conveyed 
■carefully to the "maternity ward" described in the preceding 
paragraph. The best material I have ever found for nests for 
sitting hens is tobacco stems ; the pungent odor from these 
■stems is death to lice. The nest box should be filled half full 
of tobacco stems and three or four glass eggs placed in the 
new-made nest. The sitting hen should be placed in position 
and left for the night. If she continues broody and shows a 
•disposition to stick to her job, the next night it will be safe 
to entrust her with real eggs. Give her as many eggs as she 
can comfortably cover — from eleven to fifteen, according to 
the size of the hen and the nature of the season. 

When the preparations have been made in advance for the 



48 

comfort and convenience of the sitting hen, really there is^ 
very little for the attendant to do. The hens should be exam- 
ined from time to time to see that no eggs are broken under 
them, and if a hen shows a disposition to stick to her nest 
too closely she should be lifted off every day and made to 
remain away a short time. Where eggs are broken in the 
nest, the soiled nest material should be ^removed and the 
smeared eggs cleansed in tepid water. A few days before 
the eggs are due to hatch, the tobacco stems should be 
removed and a new nest made of soft hay for the little chicks. 
The hen should at this time be given a thorough dusting with 
insect powder. 

Testing the Eggs. — Eggs should be tested under a hen as 
well as in an incubator, and the infertiles and eggs with 
aborted germs should be removed. The first test should be 
made when the hen has set seven days. Procure an egg 
tester at a poultry supply store, or make one for yourself, and 
examine all the eggs under each hen. The infertile eggs will 
be perfectly clear when exposed to the concentrated light, 
while the eggs that have begun to hatch will show a dark 
spot. The infertile eggs should be removed, and the fertile 
ones put back. Now appears the advantage of having a num- 
ber of hens sitting at the same time ; for if enough infertile 
eggs are found to warrant it, one or two of the hens can be 
started in again with new eggs, while enough fertile eggs are 
placed under the remaining hens to make up the original 
number. 

The second test should be made a week later and is a 
repetition of the first. The germ has grown much larger and 
now fills the greater part of the shell ; there is an air-space 
at the big end. In some eggs the germ has died. These eggs 
can easily be detected and should be removed or they may 
explode under the hen. 

Care of the Chicks. — The chicks should be allowed to re- 
main in the nest about 24 hours after the last one hatches out, 
and then chicks and hen should be removed to some other 
location. If it is early in the season and the ground is still 
damp and cold, I would advise putting them in a little house, 
the floor of which has been carpeted with sand, and where 
there is every convenience for their care and comfort. If you 
have followed instructions and tested out all infertile eggs 
and eggs with dead germs, and made up the quota with good. 



49 

hatchable eggs, each hen should have from 13 to 15 lively 
chicks under her charge. If the hens have been together in 
the same room during the incubating period as many as four 
hens with their broods may be placed in the same room. If 
they become so unladylike as to quarrel, they may be tethered 
so that they cannot do each other or themselves any serious 
harm. The chicks will run from one hen to another without 
discrimination, and it may be necessary to divide the flocks at 
night so that each mother may have her share. 

In a chicken house large enough to hold four hens and 
sixty chicks the chicks may be allowed to remain for several 
weeks. In the house they are safe. Rats cannot get them ; 
cats must leave them alone ; the migrating hawk cannot seize 
them in his talons. Early hatched chicks may be allowed to 
remain in the house for six weeks to advantage, unless the 
weather is exceptionally fine. 



CHAPTER VI. 



The Laying Stock. 



When a breeder sends out a consig-nment of eg-gs or stock- 
he must often wish that he could send some of his experience 
along at the same time ; for unless the customer understands 
the elementary principles of poultry keeping he will come to 
grief. Breeders often get blamed for what is not their fault. 
The number of things a man needs to know is not large ; but 
he needs to know them so well that it will become second 
nature for him to do them. 

SELECTING THE LAYERS. 

It is highly important that we put into our laying pens 
only birds that will give a good account of themselves in egg 
production ; otherwise profits will be cut down to the vanish- 
ing point. The first 75 eggs a hen lays in the course of a 
year go to pay her feed bill ; all she lays above 75 is clear 
gain. It will be seen, therefore, how necessary it is that we 
eliminate all weak layers from the flock and retain only the 
most prolific. Where there is a hen that does not lay, there 
is another hen somewhere scratching her legs off to pay that 
hen's board. 

How can we select the good layers and reject the poor 
ones? The trap nest is the only infallible way. The trap 
nest is very valuable, especially for a beginner. After a man 
has had more experience he can get along without it. But 
for a beginner the trap nest is almost indispensable. I quote 
from the letter of a correspondent : "I killed to-day for our 
dinner a hen that from the time she laid her first egg in De- 
cember. 1909, until now (January 19, 1911), has never laid but 
42 eggs. She is a full sister to three others, each of which 
went over 200 eggs in their pullet year." 

Early maturity is a valuable indication. The pullet that is 
to lay from 150 to 180 eggs a year must have twelve months 
in which to do her work ; she cannot do it in less. But there 
is another reason apart from this. Ovulation, or the produc- 
tion of the egg, is the consummation of the sexual function of 



51 

the female. The more strongly sexed a hen is the more eggs 
she will lay ; the more poorly sexed the fewer eggs. Early 
maturity is a mark of strong sex development and is to be 
highly prized in pullets. The evidence a pullet gives by early 
maturity is confirmed by the trap nest, which shows that early- 
maturing pullets surpass their slower sisters as egg producers. 
Appetite and assimilation are also tokens. The laying hen 
is the hungry hen. The hen cannot make eggs without feed 
any more than the children of Israel could make bricks with- 
out straw. The hen that is laying rushes to meet you when 
you open the door of the house in the morning, scratches 
industrious!}' in the litter all day for food, and goes to roost 
late at night. It is the hen with the full crop that lays the 
eggs. 

THE PHYSIOLOGICAL TEST. 

Besides the tests which the eye and ear supplies, there is a 
physiological test which is of great value. It is a well-known 
fact that in all mammals the pelvic bones soften and spread 
apart before the female is delivered of a child. The same 
thing is true of birds before the first egg is passed. As the 
time for ovulation draws near the pelvic bones begin to soften 
and separate, until they are so far apart that two or three 
fingess can be laid between them. The pelvic bones are the 
bones just below the vent. Pick up a young pullet, clasp 
your left hand around the legs, and hold her under your left 
arm with her head pointing to the rear. Place your right 
hand just below the vent, and you will feel two small pro- 
tuberances close together ; these are the pelvic bones. Now 
select an older pullet and treat her in the same way. You will 
notice that the bones have begun to spread apart. If the 
pullet is laying or nearly ready to lay. you can put two, and 
sometimes three, fingers between the bones. 

FEEDING FOR EGGS. 

"What do you feed?" This is a question that is asked by 
visitors to a poultry plant more than any other. The novice 
seems to think that there is some magic formula, some secret 
combination, which, if he can master, will solve all difficulties 
and make hens lay in season and out of season. This is a 
mistake. There are half a hundred methods of feeding, each 
one of which will produce good results. The hen is not a 
machine ; she is a living thing, and she has a power of adapta- 
tion and assimilation which no machine can have. 



52 

Many years' experience has convinced me that there are 
two fundamental principles underlying this whole matter of 
feeding, and these principles are so simple that a child can 
master them: 1. The hen needs plenty. 2. The hen needs 
variety. With these two principles held clearly in mind the 
poultryman need never go astray. 

1. The hen needs plenty. There was a tendency a few 
years back to underfeed. It was believed that if a hen was 
given all she could eat she would take on fat and become use- 
less for egg production. This belief has been exploded. It 
is the fat hen that lays eggs. Time after time have I killed a 
hen that was so fat that she bagged down behind only to find 
that she was full of eggs and was one of my best layers. 

The fact is, in poultry keeping we are getting too far away 
from Nature. It is a fact that has been remarked by scien- 
tific men that the young of mammals and birds are always 
produced in the season when the food supply is most abun- 
dant. A bird needs to be well provided with fat in order to 
meet the strain of incubation and the confinement of rearing 
her young. If we employed our hens to hatch and rear ou^ 
chicks we would not have to worry about getting them too 
fat, for the surplus fat would be burned up in the way Nature 
intended. 

2. The hen needs variety. In the communit}- where I live 
hens are kept in the good old-fashioned way. They are 
allowed to run at large and forage for themselves, and are fed 
with corn when they come up nights. When the season is 
mild they often range the fields clear up to Christmas. I have 
known a snowstorm, which kept the hens in the house, to cut 
down egg production to the vanishing point, although the hens 
were laying heavily before. At the same time when in the 
house they were given all the corn they would eat. What 
was the cause of the falling off in egg production? Lack of 
variety in their bill of fare. In the fields the hens found 
insects which had been killed by the frost, grass that was still 
green and tender, and many other appetizing morsels; but in 
the house all these were suddenly taken away. As a conse- 
quence, the hens shut down in egg production because they 
had not the materials out of which to construct their eggs. 

My method of feeding is simplicity itself. I use the dry 
feed method, never mixing up a wet mash. In each pen there 
is a feed hopper, divided into two compartments. In one com- 
partment I keep mixed feed or bran, and in the other beef 



53 

scraps or fish scraps, replenishing the supply whenever it 
becomes exhausted. Sometimes, when I thmk of it, i stir 
a tablespoonful of salt into eight quarts of mixed feed or bran 
before I put it into the hopper. 

There are three kinds of grain which I use— oats, wheat 
and cracked corn-varying the proportions according to the 
season. 

In the summer I feed oats m the morning, wheat at noon, 
and cracked corn and oats at night. I feed a quart of oats 
or cracked corn to every fifteen hens, or a pmt of wheat to 
the same number. 

In the winter I feed corn and oats in the morning, wheat 
at noon, and corn and oats or corn at night. The colder the 
weather the more corn I feed. In the winter the gram is 
thrown into a deep litter and the hens made to scratch for it, 
but in summer it is given them in their yards and all they 
have to do is to pick it up. 

I also feed a variety of green food, as I shall explain later. 
This is mv method of feeding, but there are a score of ways 
as good as mine. Perhaps the mcst popular formula is that 
of the Maine Experimental vStation : 
AA'heat bran, two parts; 
Corn meal, one part ; 
Middlings, one part ; . 
Gluten meal, one part ; 
Linseed meal, one part; 
Beef scrap, one part. 
Clover leaves or heads to give bulk. 
The ingredients are compounded by weight and are thor- 
oughly mixed together. The mash is kept before the hens all 
the time and they are allowed to help themselves. Whole 
corn, wheat and oats are fed in connection with the mash. 

Another 'formula that I have used and found very satis- 
factory is this : 

Mixed feed, two parts ; 
Ground alfalfa, two parts ; 
Corn meal, one part ; 
Gluten, one part ; 
Beef scraps, one part ; 
Salt, charcoal. 

Compound by bulk, and not by weight. 
Ovster shells should be kept before the hens all the time. 



54 

and their drinking dishes should never be allowed to remain 
long empty. 

COMPLETE FEED FORMULAS. 

The International Glue Company of Boston sends out a 
very valuable leaflet to its customers, containing formulas for 
all seasons and conditions. The formulas are intended to 
promote the use of fish scrap, which is manufactured b}^ the 
Company, but beef scrap can be substituted where fish scrap 
cannot be obtained, with equally good results. 

FEED FOR LAYING PULLETS. 

DRY MASH— First month in house- 
Bran, 300 pounds. 

Corn meal, 100 pounds. 

Middlings, 100 pounds. 

Fish scrap, 100 pounds. 
Second month in house — 

Bran, 200 pounds. 

Corn meal, 100 pounds. 

Middlings, 100 pounds. 

Gluten meal, 100 pounds. 

Red Star scrap, 100 pounds. 
Third month, same as second, with 50 pounds linseed meal. 
Fourth month, same as second. 
Fifth and following months, same as third month. 
One feed each day whole or cracked corn. 
One feed each day, equal parts wheat and oats. 

FEED FOR OLD HENS AND COCKERELS KEPT AS 

BREEDERS. 

DRY MASH — Until beginning of breeding season — 

Bran, 400 pounds. 

Corn meal, 50 pounds. 

Middlings, 50 pounds. 

Red Star fish scrap, 100 pounds. 
During breeding season same as pullets in third month. 
Dry grain same as for pullets. 

FEED FOR CHICKENS. 

SCRATCHING MIXTURE— Chick feed- 
Cracked wheat, 150 pounds. 
Pinhead oats, 100 pounds. 



Fine screened cracked corn, 150 pounds. 

Fine cracked peas, 30 pounds. ■ 

Broken rice. 20 pounds. 

Chick grit, 50 pounds. 

Fine charcoal, 20 pounds. 

MASH— 

Wheat bran, 40 pounds. 
Corn meal. 35 pounds. 
Linseed meal, 5 pounds. 
Red Star scrap (fine). 20 pounds. 
Alfalfa meal, 5 pounds. 
The mash is scalded and then dry rolled oats are mixed 
with it in proportion of two parts rolled oats to six parts mix- 

"' From about the third week on a dry mash is used which 
has at the beginning the following composition and is modi- 
fied to suit the need of the growing stock : 

Wheat bran, 20 pounds. 

Corn meal, 30 pounds. 

Linseed meal, 5 pounds. 

Daisy flour. 10 pounds. 

Red Star fish scrap. 10 pounds. 

GREEN FEED. 
Green feed of some kind is necessary if the hens are to 
keep m good health and do their best m egg production, in 
order fo? the food to be digested the gastric and pancreatic 
juices must circulate freely, and where the food is concen- 
rated these juices cannot penetrate easily Consequently,, 
digestion IS not so thorough. Green feed ightens up the 
mass, and also supplies a mild vegetable acid that acts as a. 

tonic to the system. i • ^ ,v 

\fter the feed has passed through the crop and gizzard it 
enters the intestines, and it is passed along by peristaltic action 
until it is either absorbed or eliminated. It is evident that the 
■ intestines can do their work more easily if they have to deal 
with a soft, moist, porous mass than they can if they have to 
push along dry. hard, concentrated fecal matter Thus he 
health of the fowl demands that the ration shall l)e bulky 
rather than otherwise, and that green feed shall form a con- 
siderable part of it. . 

Where hens have a free grass range they will secure their 
own supply of green feed during the summer months; but 



56 

where they are confined in their pens or shut up to yards 
denuded of all vegetation, they must be supplied by their 
owner. 

Second-growth clover is an ideal green feed, if it can be 
produced at a moderate price. It need not be cut up, l)ut 
inay be fed on the stalk, say a l^ushel a day to every 25 hens ; 
and the stalks may be allowed to remain for litter. 

Cabbages are excellent, and so are mangels. Mangels 
may be grown with little labor, and a small plot of land will 
produce a generous supply, as they grow to immense size. 

Onions are good in limited amounts, but fed too freely 
they flavor the eggs. Cabbages and mangels may be fed 
whole, but onions should be chopped. 

Boughs from pine trees, nailed to the studding of the 
house, will furnish the hens with green feed and exercise. 
They will eat the needles greedily, and the pine needles seem 
to have a medicinal efifect upon the fowls. 

SPROUTED OATS— 'FEED TEX CENTS A BUSHEL." 

Some years ago there appeared in the poultry papers an 
advertisement that attracted wide attention. It was headed 
"Feed Ten Cents a Bushel." Those who answered the ad- 
vertisement received a circular which described a book in 
which the formula for this feed could be found. The price 
•of the book. I am told, ranged from one to five dollars. 
Those who sent the money received the magic formula, and 
learned that the wonderful feed was — sprouted oats. There 
was a feeling at first on the part of the purchaser that he had 
been "stung," that he had paid an exorbitant sum for infor- 
mation of doubtful worth, but as time went on, as he gave 
the formula a trial, he found that his money had been well 
invested, that in sprouted oats he had a feed of great value, 
that five dollars was a small sum to pay for what he had 
received in return. 

I wonder if the fellow who first ran across the idea of 
sprouted oats knew what he had found, and I wonder if one 
in a hundred who feed sprouted oats knows wherein the 
great benefit lies. Where oats or barley germinate out of the 
ground, they produce a chemical substance called diastase, 
which has the power to convert starch into dextrin, maltose 
and dextrose. Diastase in digestion has a power similar to 
saliva. That this substance when consumed by hens or cock- 
erels has the further power to augment fertility in the egg 



57 



there cannot be the least doubt. Th.s .s where the great 
te spronted uats res.des: eggs will be far -ore lert.le 
when thex are fed. Feed when the spronts are an nrch long, 
To Secure- the best results, and not wa.t nnt.l they are longe,. 
The process of sprouting oats is thus described b> Mr. U. 
E. Kevser in the Petalnma Weekly Poultry Journal. 

"Take a quantity of cl.pped or whole oats and soak thent 
in water for 24 hours. Then pour off the water and place the 
oa.lt a shallow box wh.ch has holes in the bottom to let 
the' water drain off. Night and morning water the oats, using 
a sprinkhng pot and warm water. Spread the oats out ,n the 
box to the thickness of about two inches. Th.s-may be done 
as soon as the oats are placed m the box, or they may be left 
i, a ;,le until thev begin to sprout; but contnrtte to water 
them night and n,orning. In ten days or two ""^s depend- 
mg on the temperature of the room where they are kep . they 

wm be readv to feed To feed, cut n, o blocks 

eio-ht to ten mches square. By this process one bushel o 
Tats wm mawe about fot,r bushels of feed. . • With oats 

at the present price .... Ms feed costs I. cents a 

''"ta.lev is recommended b>- another writer in the same 
naper Mr X. S. Trowbridge, as a substitute for oats. Barley 
posse;ses nearly the same constituents as oats, but as .t 
lerminates more qu.ckly is more desirable for use n, wnrter. 
The method of preparation is the same. The oats or bar ey 
should be germinated m a nioderately warm room, preferably 
a cellar. 

EXERCISE. 
Lavmo- hens cannot keep in good health and produce the 
.naximunt number of eggs without a ----;^^\^7;;;;\j^ 
fresh air and exercise. They do not need to be kept on he 
jump from morning until night-a poultry house is not a 
camp for consumptives-but a certain modicum of fresh air 
and exercise they must have if they are to do their best work 
in esfg" production. . , 

Ixercise breaks down the old tissues, which must be 
replaced with new ones. It is on the new wood that the tree 
bears its fruit, and it is with the new tissues that the egg- 
making organs are stimulated. Where the old tissues are not 
broken down with sufficient rapidity, the fowl takes on fat, 
becomes lazy, and comparatively few eggs are produced. 



58 

Xo matter what system of feeding is adopted, the hens 
should be made to work and work hard for a part of their 
ration. To this end the ^grains that are fed should always 
be scattered in a deep litter, and the hens compelled to dig 
them out. 

While hens are at work in the house the windows should 
be opened, and closed when they are through. On every 
pleasant day in winter, when the snow is not too deep, they 
should be let out in their yards for a little while. A few 
minutes' exercise with the snow shovel will furnish the biddies 
with a patch of bare ground which they will greatly appre- 
ciate. 

CARE OF THE HOUSE. 

The poultry house should be kept clean and supplied with 
everything needed for the health and comfort of the fowls. 
When I speak of keeping a house clean, I speak relatively. I 
do not expect it to be kept as immaculate as a lady's parlor, 
but to be kept clean enough so that the health of the fowls 
will not sufifer. The droppings should be removed at least 
once a week or sprinkled over with land plaster or sifted coal 
ashes, and the roosts and side supports should be kerosened 
once a month in winter and once a week in summer. It is a 
good plan to sweep the walls and ceiling and whitewash twice 
a year. During the winter the floor should be covered with 
litter, which should be renewed frequently. In each pen 
there should* be a dust box kept well filled with sifted coal 
ashes, so that the hens can take a bath whenever they wish to. 

"For killing lice upon the walls and roofs of the henhouse 
there is nothing better than cresol soap, made as follows : 
Shave one 10-cent cake of laundry soap into a pint of soft 
water; heat or allow to stand until a soap paste is formed. 
Stir in one pound commercial cresol and heat or allow to 
stand until the paste is dissolved. Stir in one gallon of 
kerosene. 

"Cresol is a coal-tar product and may be obtained from the 
druggists at about 30 cents per pound. Care should be taken 
not to get any upon the hands or face, as it will cause intense 
smarting. For use as a lice paint, apply undiluted. When 
used as a disinfectant through the spraying machine for 
killing mites, it may be diluted with fifty parts of water, 
which will make a milky colored liquid." 



59 

GETTING RID OF LICE. 

Lice are easil}^ raised, but are not a very profitable crop. 
The best way is not to allow them to get a start. Where 
the fowls are in good health and have access to a dust bath 
and the house is kept reasonably clean, there ought to be no 
trouble in holding them in check. The male is the worst 
ofifender. He seems to have a constitutional aversion to a 
bath, and if left alone will soon be swarming with lice him- 
self and distribute them among the rest of the flock. The 
poultryman not uncommonly finds that the term "breeding 
male" has a double significance. The only sure way to keep 
lice ofl: your fowls is to dust them with a good lice killer 
once in a while. 

There are many brands of lice powder on the market, but 
the poultryman can make as good a one as he can buy. Bul- 
letin 179 of the Maine Experiment Station gives the formula 
for a lice powder that cannot be beaten : 

"Take 3 parts of gasoline and 1 part of crude carbolic acid, 
90-95 per cent strength, or, if the 90-95 per cent strength crude 
carbolic acid cannot be obtained, take 3 parts of gasoline and 
1 part of cresol. Mix these together and add gradually, with 
stirring, enough plaster of paris to take up all the moisture. 
As a general rule it will take about 4 parts of plaster of paris 
to 1 quart of the liquid. The exact amount, however, must 
be determined by tiie condition of the powder in each case. 
The liquid and dry plaster should be thoroughly mixed and 
stirred so that the liquid will be uniformly distributed through 
the mass of plaster. When enough plaster has been added, 
the resulting mixture should be a dry, pinkish-brown powder 
having a fairly strong carbolic odor and a rather less pro- 
nounced gasoline odor. 

"Do not use more plaster in mixing than is necessary to 
blot up the liquid. The powder is to be worked into the 
feathers of the birds afifected with vermin. The bulk of the 
application should be in the flufif around the vent, and on 
the ventral side of the body, and in the fluff under the wings. 
Its efficiency, which is greater than .that of any other lice 
powder known to the writers, can be very easily demonstrated 
by anyone to his own satisfaction. Take a bird that is covered 
with lice and apply the powder in the manner just described. 
After the lapse of about a minute, shake the bird, loosening 
its feathers with the fingers at the same time, over a clean 
piece of paper. Dead and dying lice will drop on the paper 



60 

in great numbers. Any one who will try this experiment will 
have no further doubt of the wonderful efficiency and value 
of this powder. 

"For a spray or paint to be applied to roosting boards, 
nest boxes or walls and floor of the hen houses, the following 
preparation is used : 3 parts of kerosene and 1 part crude 
carbolic acid, 90-95 per cent strength. This is stirred up 
when used and may be applied with any of the hand-spray 
pumps or with a brush. 

*Tf 90-95 per cent crude carbolic acid can not be obtained, 
cresol may be substituted for it in this paint." 

SICKNESS IN THE FLOCK. 

Where the laying stock possess constitutional vigor and 
are kept under sanitary conditions, the amount of sickness 
will be small. It is a question whether it pays to doctor sick 
hens or not. Certainly it does not where the treatment must 
be individual and extended over a long period. But in the case 
of simple ailments, or accidents, it probably does pay, espe- 
cially where it can be arranged so that the hens will take 
their own medicine. In case of sickness it is a good plan to 
at once remove the afflicted ones to an airy and sunny pen and 
keep them there until they are cured. Nature is working on 
the side of health, and hens often get well without their 
owner's assistance. Still, there are a few common diseases 
that I find it pays to treat. 

Colds, Catarrh, Bronchitis. — These are the most common 
afl^lictions that beset our fowls ; they seem to run one into 
another if left alone. Colds often make their appearance in 
the fall when the laying stock are taken from the range and 
transferred to their winter quarters. Sudden changes of tem- 
perature afifect fowls just as they do human beings. A small 
crack or opening above the heads of the hens on the roost, 
which creates a draft, is the cause of many colds. Colds are 
characterized by sneezing, bubbles in the eyes, and by the 
sealing up of the nostrils, so that the bird is obliged to breathe 
through the mouth. There are various simple remedies for 
colds which are very good. Chopped onions seem to act as a 
gentle stimulant and often restore the birds to health. A few 
drops of creolin in a gallon of drinking water is recommended, 
although the birds do not like the taste and will drink only 
when driven to it by extreme thirst. A pinch or two of 
permanganate of potash in a gallon of drinking water is 



61 

excellent. Permanganate of potash may be purchased at any 
drug store and seems to be the base of the so-called "roup 
remedies." A few drops of spirits of camphor or of aconite 
in the same amount of water will frequently abort a cold. F(^r 
cleaning the nostrils dip a feather in kerosene and touch each 
nostril with the tip. 

Roup is thought by many to be the result of a neglected 
cold ; by others to be a bacterial disease. Roup is one of the 
greatest scourges of the poultry yard. The disease is char- 
acterized by a peculiarly loathsome smell, which haunts the 
memory of anyone who ever breathed it, but which makes 
identification easy. Roup is highly contagious, and the sick 
hens should be segregated at once. Put the worst cases out 
of their misery, burn or bury their bodies, give the house a 
thorough cleaning out, spray with some good disinfectant, and 
put roup medicine into the drinking water. 

Scaly legs is sufficiently defined by its name. It is con- 
tagious, spreading from fowl to fowl, but its progress is slow. 
A good treatment is to spray the legs with kerosene, repeating- 
the treatment once a week as long as necessary. The scales 
in time will drop off. Keep the roosts well sprayed with kero- 
sene at the same time. 

Crop-bound is the choking of the passage from the crop 
into the gizzard, generally by hay or grass which the hen has 
swallowed. The obstruction must be removed and the pas- 
sage opened in some way. Begin by giving the fowl a dessert- 
spoonful of olive oil, and after she has swallowed it try knead- 
ing the crop. 

Sometimes by holding the hen head downwards and gently 
kneading the crop the contents may be dislodged. If this 
treatment fails a slight surgical operation is necessary. With 
an assistant to hold the bird, make an incision an inch long 
in the upper jxvrt of the cro]), cutting through the (tuter and 
the inner skin. Then with a wooden skewer remove the 
offending mess, making sure by running in your finger that 
the passage into the gizzard is no longer obstructed. vSew up 
the inner skin, using silk thread and making each stitch com- 
plete by itself. Then sew up the outer skin in the same way. 
Put the bird by herself, and after 24 hours feed lightly on a 
warm mash until the wound heals and the bird is cured. 

Liver Trouble. — In the spring the poultryman is quite 
likelv to lose a number of choice birds from liver trouble. The 



62 

comb is the barometer of the bird's condition. When in per- 
fect health the comb is bright red, as in the case of heavily 
laying females pale but not purple. A purple comb is the 
signal that the liver is out of order. A teaspoonful of olive 
oil administered as a laxative is good. But the best treatment 
is to at once make a change in the bill of fare, feeding less 
corn and giving more green stuff. 

Although I have not spoken very enthusiastically about 
doctoring sick fowls, yet I believe that every poultryman 
should have in his library a book on poultry diseases. The 
study of this book will enable him to recognize the beginnings 
of disease sooner than he would otherwise, and to take pre- 
cautionary measures, for in the poultry house it is emphat- 
ically true that "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of 
cure." 

BROODY HENS. 

Where a large egg output is desired, the key to the situa- 
tion is found in the treatment of broody hens. Broodiness is 
nature's signal that the vital forces have been drawn upon in 
egg production and that the hen needs rest. When I find a 
broody hen on the nest at night, I remove her to the breaking- 
up pen, carefully noting down in a memorandum slip the day 
of the month and the hen's pen and number. The breaking- 
up pen differs from the other pens only in one particular — the 
nest boxes have been removed. In this pen the broodies have 
their headquarters until the fever abates. They are fed lightly 
— not more than one-fourth the usual amount— and are given 
access to a grass range. Most people are in too great a hurry 
to break up sitting hens. Do not bother them, but let them 
take their own time. In a week or ten days they will be 
cured. 



CHAPTER VII. 



The Selling End. 



The great problem which confronts the farmer in these 
days is how to get his share of the consumer's dollar. The 
farmer can raise any amomit of truck. There are books and 
reports tliat will tell him how to increase the product of 
dairy, farm and field. But when it comes to disposing of the 
product it is dififerent. There are no books and reports that 
will help him here. The problem is one he must work out 
for himself. All concede that too large a proportion of the 
farmer's profits goes to the middleman. 

The loss to farmers the country through is simply stu- 
pendous. The farmers of this country in 1910 received $8,000,- 
000,000 for their products, while the consumers the same year 
paid between $13,000,000,000 and $14,000,000,000 for the same 
■commodities. In other words, the farmer gets only 60 cents 
of the consumer's dollar. It is not the high cost of living 
but the high cost of selling that troubles the farmer. 

CUT OUT THE MIDDLEMEN^ 

The poultryman is in the same boat with his brother 
farmers : too great a proportion of his profits goes to the 
middlemen. Back from the cities the poultryman sells to the 
collector, the collector to the commission merchant, the com- 
mission merchant to the wholesaler, the wholesaler to the 
retailer, and the retailer to the consumer. Here are five profits 
to be made. If the farmer could only cut out these middle- 
men and deal directlv with the consumer, he would be in- 
finitely better oiT. 

THE SIDE-LINE POULTRYMAN. 

It is here that the side-line poultryman has his great ad- 
vantage — he deals directly with the consumer. It costs him 
no more for feed than it does his brother back on the hills a 
hundred miles from market, and he gets at least one-third 
more for his product. It is for this reason that I so stren- 
uously advocate poultry keeping as a side line. The poultry 
papers are full of descriptions of big farms ; the ideal to be 



64 

aimed at is a farm devoted entirely to poultry keeping. It is 
a mistake. The fellow who is the best off is the fellow who 
has a city lot with a chance for poultry in the back yard or 
a little place just outside the city within the five-cent electric 
car fare zone, and who puts in his spare time with his fowls. 
He does not have enough to do on his place to feel burdened, 
and he can add two or three hundred dollars each year to his 
income with but little eft'ort. The hens will pay the rent or 
pay for the place if he wants to buy.. He can take his eggs 
and fowls to market when he goes to work, and not unlikely 
sell to his shopmates or his employers for a good sum. 

BUILDING UP A PRIVATE TRADE IN FANCY FRESH 

EGGS. 

Perhaps I can do no better than to give you a chapter out 
of my own experience. For several years I lived in a small 
country village within an hour's drive of a Massachusetts 
city of 40,000 inhabitants. The only outlet for my eggs was 
the city grocer who sent a team once a week to take orders 
and deliver goods. I had t(3 take just what he would give me. 
While he was a square man, he was not in business for his 
health, and made a good profit off the eggs I sold him. It 
was necessary for me to go to the city once a week on business, 
and so I decided to take some eggs along. I well remember 
the morning I started out. It was a beautiful summer day, 
and I took along with me 20 dozen large brown eggs in a 
new covered basket, thinking that I would have no difficulty 
in disposing of them. The first place where I called was a 
drug store on the corner which made a specialty of summer 
drinks and used a large number of eggs every week. I was 
told here that they were supplied regularly with all the eggs 
they needed and could not use mine. I thanked them, bade 
them a pleasant "good morning," and started out again. At 
the next drug store they looked at my eggs, but told me they 
were well supplied that morning, and then asked me if I meant 
to call every week. I told them I did. I sat down before the 
soda fountain, ordered a milk-shake and chatted pleasantly 
with the proprietor while I imbibed the refreshing drink. In 
the course of the forenoon I visited a number of drug stores 
and restaurants, but could not find a customer. But in each 
case I kept smiling and perfectly polite and told them I would 
call again. I finally succeeded in disposing of my eggs to a 
grocer for about what I would have got for them at the door. 



65 

But I was not discouraged ; I was learning ; I knew it would 
take time to make an impression. Rome was not built in a day. 

The next week, the same day of the week, I went to the 
city again, and had practically the same experience. I did 
not sell an egg for more than the market price. The third 
week, the same day, I sold a few dozen to a druggist. By this 
time the druggists and restaurant keepers were coming to 
know me, and to find out that they could depend upon my 
coming to tlie city every week with a supply of eggs. The 
fourth week I sold out. After that I had no trouble. I began 
to take on private customers from among those who happened 
U) be in the drug stores wlien I delivered my eggs, or among 
those who patronized the soda fountains and found that when 
the clerk broke an egg with my stamp on it there was no chick 
inside. In two months I had all the customers I could supply, 
who were willing to pay me the highest market price for my 
eggs, which averaged about 10 cents a dozen more than the 
grocer would pay at the door. 

I attribute my success in picking up customers in a city 
where I was practically unknown to four things: 1. I had a 
good article. The eggs were fresh and clean and the man who 
l^ought a trial dozen to-day would want more the next time 
T saw him. 2. My wares were presented in an attractive wav. 
■ They were always carried in a clean covered basket and 
looked good when I showed them. 3. I kept smiling and 
pleasant whether a man bought of me or not. I was not 
easily rebuffed. 4. Regularity in delivery. I went every 
week, the same day. The druggists and others soon found 
they could depend on me, and I Ijuilt up a gilt-edge trade 
that stood l)y me and advertised me to other customers. 

SELLING THE FOWLS. 

The poultryman has fowls to sell as well as eggs, and if he 
sells them right he will add materially to his profits. Perhaps 
I can do no better than to go and tell how I prepared and sold 
my fowls when I was selling eggs. I did not hunt up private 
customers. This can be done, but it takes time, and time is. 
money. So I deliberately decided to sacrifice one profit and 
sell to the retail meat dealer, dressing the birds myself. I 
chose for my ol)jective dealers that had a good class of trade 
and who would appreciate a gilt-edge article. 

Once a week I would go through my pens at night and pick 
the fowls that I thought ought to be sent to market,, using 



66 

the methods of selection described in Chapter VI. These 
fowls were shut up in a crate and not fed through the day, 
but were given all the water they would drink. At night I 
gave them a ration of cornmeal and clear sand, mixed up with 
skim milk or hot water, and allowed them to eat all they 
would of the mixture. The next morning when I was ready 
to kill them, their crops were empty, but their intestines were 
full, and they had not shrunk in weight as is the case with 
fowls that are shipped to a commission merchant in the city. 
The Massachusetts law requires fowls to be sold undrawn, 
with heads on, and by the method of feeding which I have 
described the shrinkage in weight is reduced to a minimum. 

The method of killing was as follows: The fowl was sus- 
pended by its legs by a double cord attached to the floor tim- 
bers overhead, and looped at the lower end, at a height which 
brought the head of the fowl a little below the waist line of 
the operator. The back of the head was then grasped in the 
left hand, and held so that it lay in the palm of the left hand, 
•at a convenient height for making the incision. With a 
•double-edged pointed knife, made for the purpose, I made a 
■deep cut about at the point where the head and neck join, 
•cutting across and cutting clear down to the bone. Then 
as I withdrew the knife I turned the sharp point up and 
against the roof of the mouth and thrust it into the brain, 
turning it half arovnid. This is supposed to paralyze the brain 
and render the bird unconscious. Where the cut across the 
throat is made aright, a spurt of dark blood follows the with- 
drawal of the knife and for about a minute the bird bleeds 
pr(ifusely. Then she gathers up her strength for one final 
convulsive struggle, which, however, is soon over. The 
struggle seems to unlock or unfix the feathers, and plucking 
is now comparatively easy. In 15 minutes at the longest the 
bird ought to be divested of all her feathers. 

I would say in passing that in plucking broilers or squabs 
you are less likely to tear the skin if you sit down and hold 
the bird in your lap. An old burlap bag will protect the 
clothes while you are at work upon the birds. 

After the bird is denuded of its feathers it should be placed 
in a tub of cold water and allowed to remain there until the 
animal heat is withdrawn from the body. Then the lower 
joint of each wing should be locked across the upper, a noose 
should be placed around the legs and the carcass hung in a 
cool place to drip. 



67 

I found it advisable to take the fowls to market on the 
afternoon of the day they were killed, and tried to make them 
look as attractive as possible. A piece of clean brown paper 
was spi:ead upon the bottom of a new market basket and the 
fowls laid upon that. When the basket was full a clean towel 
was used to cover the carcasses, so that no dust could get at 
them. My aim was to make the birds look as attractive and 
appetizing as possible. 

HOW TO SCALD A FOWL. 
Where fowls are sold in the local market or shipped to a 
commission merchant (unless sold alive), they should always 
be dry picked, but where sold to private customers time will 
be saved by scalding before plucking. There is a right and 
a wrong way to do this. In the water in which the fowls are 
to be scalded put a piece of rosin about as big as an English 
walnut. The rosin toughens the outer skin and keeps it from 
breaking or peeling. The water should be just below the 
boiling point. Take the head of the fowl in the left hand and 
the legs in the right and dip the carcass in the water, back 
downward, withdrawing it immediately ; then dip it in again, 
breast downward, and take it out as soon as you can. Now 
take the carcass and roll a burlap bag around it, letting it 
remain a few minutes ; then unroll the burlap and begin to 
pick. After the feathers are removed put in cold water and 
proceed as described in the preceding section. 

FINDING A WIDER MARKET. 

What about the man* who has no market at his door or 
whose local market is exceedingly limited? In this case he 
must go abroad for an outlet for his products. He must make 
up his mind at the outset that he will have to sacrifice some of 
the profits, but this need not discourage him, for, as we have 
seen in the case of Mr. Dunlap, it is possible to do business 
at long range and still have a balance on the right side of the 
ledger. 

It is always easier to do business by personal interview 
than by correspondence, and so I would advise the man who 
is looking for a city market to devote a few days to looking 
up customers. It is not always the big city that is the best 
objective, for the big city draws supplies from a vast territory. 
For instance, Boston gets eggs from northern New England, 
from Cape Cod, from the Maritime Provinces and from the 
West. New York draws her supplies from hundreds of miles 



around. Sometimes a small city situated between two big 
cities will pay more for eggs and poultry products than either 
metropolis ; for the small city draws from a narrower terri- 
tory and her supplies are liable to be diverted to the great 
cities on either side. 

Druggists are good customers for fancy eggs and will often 
sign a yearly contract. The soda fountain trade grows in 
magnitude each year, and egg drinks are increasingly popular. 
There are grocery stores catering to a high class of trade 
which are always anxious to make connections with a poul- 
tryman who can be depended on to ship them eggs every 
week in the year. Clubs, hotels and high-grade restaurants 
should be approached. There are men in cities who have 
a private egg route, and these men are on the lookout for 
producers who can supply them with a first-class article. 
Perhaps an arrangement can be made with the janitor of a 
church to handle your eggs as a side line to his regular Avork. 
These men have a large acquaintance with families and often 
would be glad to add to their income by handling your eggs 
on commission. 

In visiting a city to solicit custom, time your trip so that 
you will approach the prospective customer at a season when 
the demand is brisk and the supply limited. The proffer of 
a case of strictly fresh eggs a week the year around is a much 
more attractive proposition to a city grocer in November than 
it is in March ; and many a man will sign a contract then that 
will obligate him to take eggs in summer who would not 
sign it at any other time. 

THE COMMISSION MERCHANT. 

The commission merchant fills a place in our modern com- 
mercial life. It is his business to stand between producer and 
consumer and find a market for the one and a supply of com- 
modities for the other. I do not advise shipping to a commis- 
sion merchant except as a last resort (for you sacrifice too 
many profits), but all of us find it necessary to fall back on 
him at times. 

The same advice I gave about finding city customers 
applies to commission merchants. Spend a day or two in the 
city once in a while in getting acquainted. Look them up at 
the bank where they do business. After you begin to ship go 
to see the merchants once in a while, to let them know you 
are on the earth. Use them well and you will find that they 
will use you well in return. 



69 



The commission merchant wUl send yon from tnne to t,me 
a bullet n describing the condition of the cty markets. He 

tv 1 a so send yon every now and then a postal card with 

will also sena y j ^^^^^ ^^^ ^.^^^ ^^^ ^n<j 

pr,ces n.arked on ^h P ^ot . .^ ^^ ^^^^^^^^^ 

cU\t. tlipm in the wav lie leiis vuu. j- ^ . ^ i, 

n nn . The commiss.on merchant is anxions to get m touch 

: te nT n who have the goods and know how to debver 

en ..>d ,f von stick to bin, and use Inm well yon wll find 

1 at he will do von favors in return, such as not.fyntg you ^ 

wlten v-on can sdl to the best advantage and when to w,th- 

hold shipments from the market. 

THE JEWISH TRADE. 
The Jewish element m our population yearly increases 
,„ nun b rs and nttportance. New York is the largest Jew sn 
ct m t e world, and Boston, Philadelphia. Baltnnore. Ch,- 
"ll„X Louis, Denver. San Francisco and other great ct.es 
cago, c^t. Lvuui.. Tp,^^ are f^ood livers 

have important Jewish colonies. The Jews ,o 

and are among the poultryman's best customers. The reli 
gt, forbids them the use of lard, and in their cooking Uie fa 
:, chickens takes its place. The Jews buy only >; ^'^^ 
a fowl is n, ,t ceremonially clean unless killed b> a , bbi^ Tl e 
Jewish ecclesiastical year has ";■-;;-;«-;■ ^^^ ^ 
festivals an immense amount of poultry is eatei 
a week l>eforehand for the best prices. The Jewish eccle . 
tialt al vear is lunar and not solar like our own ; that is, time 
;i!-,i;ed by the moon and not by the sun. A-"-d>"| • 
the annual feasts do not always fall on the same date. The 
World" manac, which may be ordered through any news- 
dealer and retails for 2,S cents, will give you the arrangement 
teldi current year, and should be in the hands of every 

shipper. 

TWO BY-PRODUCTS. 
There are two by-products which are usually wasted but 
wh^h if saved and sold would add something to the pot. U- 
man's income The first of these is the feathers. There are 
™ who will buy feathers, ,f you only know where to find 
Tern Sometime! they advertise in poultry papers; sorne- 
Les yon have to hunt them up^ Pure wh, e hen s feathers 
are worth about 20 cents a P°""d , P"- ->^'t; j"* ';;^\^^^^^^^^ 
40 cents ■ geese feathers range much higher. Colored feathers 
lontthe' wings and tails are in demand by milliners and bring 
good prices. 



70 

The other by-product is the manure, of which a large 
amount is made in the course of the year. _ I have known a 
poultryman to take the manure out and dump it in piles on 
the ground to go to waste. If you do not need it on your 
own land you can easily find a customer. Poultry manure 
reasonably free from dirt and sprinkled lighth' with land 
plaster to retain the ammonia is worth at least a dollar a 
barrel. 

WAYSIDE ADVERTISING. . 

Often men range the world over for what they could find 
at home. No doubt people pass our place every day who 
want to buy what we have to sell, but we miss their trade 
because they do not know that we have what they want. 
There are great possibilities in wayside advertising. On my 
way to the city I pass a place that always attracts ni}' atten- 
tion ; a very pretty little house with perhaps an acre of land 
attached. It is a good sized city lot, nothing more. It is 
owned and occupied, I understood, by a widow with three 
children. What interests me is the system with which this 
acre farm is managed. Every square foot is utilized, and 
every square foot is made to pay. The owner has had a 
number of neat signs painted, and whenever I go by one of 
these is out, calling attention to something she has to sell. 
"Eggs for Hatching" greets my eyes in the spring. Later 
comes "Strawberries," then "Raspberries" or "Flowers." And 
in the fall there is a board with the legend "Honey for Sale. ' 
I understand that this woman makes fabulous profits out of 
her acre farm. Customers call at the door and pay big prices 
for all she has to sell. Her success suggests the possibilities 
of wayside advertising. Every reader of this book who lives 
on the main road and has anything to sell should have a num- 
ber of neat signs painted with the name of some commodity 
on each, to post by the wayside to be read by passers by. The 
best market in the world is often at our very doors. I know 
a man who lives in a country town who had potatoes to sell. 
He had a sign printed, "Potatoes for Sale," and stuck up 
where everybody who drove by could see. As a consequence, 
he sold all he had for one dollar a bushel, the same price his 
neighbors received for theirs in the city, six miles away. If 
a hundred people pass your door every twenty-four hours, the 
chances are that some of them will be interested in what you 
have to sell. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

Laying Down Eggs. 

There is no article in daily use that I know anything about 
the price of which varies with such astronomical regularity 
as does that of eggs. Their movement up and down is as 
periodic as the rise and fall of the tides or the oscillations of 
the pendulum. Generally the period of lowest prices begins 
in March and continues well into May. This is the natural 
breeding season of fowls, and eggs are produced in greatest 
abundance. By the first of June eggs begin to take an upward 
turn, and advance slowly until September. In September 
many of the older fowls begin to moult, and cease production 
altogether. From this point the rise is rapid, reaching the 
maximum at Thanksgiving, then the price drops a little, but 
soon recovers itself and continues high until well into January, 
when it begins to break, dropping rapidly in' February and 
March as the spring flood of eggs comes into the market. 
This is the general trend of things year after year, but is sub- 
ject to slight annual variations, for some seasons are more 
favorable to egg production than others ; and in any year a 
sudden warm or cold wave may cause a break or rise in prices. 

Xow it follows from what has been said that it would be 
of great advantage to producer and consumer alike if some- 
simple, practical methods of preserving eggs were generally 
known and adopted. It would be of great advantage to the 
producer because it would serve as a balance weight and 
prevent eggs from dropping so low that it is unprofitable to 
produce them. Statistics show that the average hen does not 
produce over 120 eggs a year, and nearly half of these are laid 
in March. April and INIay. If the owner of the hen cuald 
obtain, say, a cent apiece more for these eggs it would mean 
a great addition to his annual profits. 

If every poultry keeper in the United States would lay 
down his family supply of eggs for the year in March it would: 
take at least 250,000,000 dozens of eggs out of the market 
at a time when eggs are lowest, and the price of eggs would 
never drop l)elow 25 cents a dozen. For l)y April millions of 



72 

-dozens more are required for incubation, and this absorbs the 
surplus to a considerable extent. 

And it would be a great advantage to the consumer if he 
or she would lay down the year's supply in the spring. There 
is no article of diet more nutritious and healthful than eggs. 
They are in themselves a perfect food, and are easily prepared. 
In England eggs appear on the breakfast table of the lietter 
■classes every day in the year, and it would be better for ihe 
people of this country if they ate more eggs and less meat. 
And yet at certain seasons of the year the price of fresh eggs 
is practicall}' prohibitive. AVho can afford to have fresh eggs 
"for breakfast when they are 45 or 50 cents a dozen? Only 
the wealthiest and most extravagant. How much it would 
mean to the health and economics of every family if they knew 
how to lay down the family supply of eggs in the spring, when 
eggs are at their best and lowest in price ! 

COLD vSTORAGE. 

Cold storage is the process of preserving eggs, meats, fruits, 
etc., by keeping them in a temperature so low that decay is 
impossible. Decay is produced by Ijacteria, microscopic vege- 
table organisms, which multiply with marvelous rapidity, or 
l^y stimulation of the germ of life already within the egg. 
Chemical changes follow, and the result is fermentation and 
•decomposition. Like all living things, these bacteria recjuire 
warmth for development. When the temperature is kept near 
the freezing point their ravages are held in check, and the 
substance to be preserved does not change in composition. 

Storage plants are now erected in all our larger cities and 
.are under government supervision. In the largest of them 
LInited States inspectors are constantly on duty to see that 
they are maintained under sanitary conditions. The articles 
to be refrigerated are stored in large chambers or compart- 
ments, where the temperature is reduced by the constant 
'Circulation of ammonia through pipes or by means of ice. 

Thousands of cases of eggs (each case containing 30 
'dozens) are placed in these storage plants every season, to be 
liberated as they are needed. These eggs are largely Western 
eggs, few Eastern eggs being available for the purpose, and 
come from farms and ranches. They are bought when eggs 
are lowest and average two weeks old when put in storage. 
The egg chamber is supposed to be kept at a temperature of 
32 degrees, cold enough to freeze cracked eggs, 1)ut not cold 



73 

enough to freeze whole ones. They are taken out in prac- 
tically the same condition they are put in. Indeed, eggs have 
been kept in cold storage for three years and when taken out 
could not be distinguished from eggs that had been there only 
a short time. Before being placed on the market each egg is 
'•candled." or exposed to the rays of an electric light, which 
reveals its condition. If the egg is clear it is passed; if 
cloudy, it is thrown out and sold to morocco dressers to be 
used in tanning their leather. Cracked eggs are placed in a 
class bv themselves and sold to bakers. 

Cold storage plants might be used by poultrymen who live 
in the neighborhood of cities to store their surplus product. 
The price charged for storage is low. At the large plant at 
which I obtained material for this chapter the rate of storage 
is only 10 cents a case a month. As each case contains 30 
dozens, it would cost only two cents a dozen to hold eggs six 
months, when they could be sold at a large increase. Storage 
eggs generally sell for about two-thirds the price of the fresh 
article. But these eggs, as I have said, will average two weeks 
old when put into storage, and many of them are very inferior 
specimens. There is no reason why selected eggs from the 
farm, laid down when perfectly fresh, should not sell at retail 
around the price of new-laid eggs, for they equal new-laid eggs 
in many particulars. I was surprised in going through a large 
local plant to learn that poultrymen did not avail themselves 
of the opportunity that lay at their very doors. If it pays the 
cold storage men to buy eggs in the West, with the inevitable 
breakage in transportation, carry them six months and then 
sell them for two-thirds the price of fresh eggs, it would cer- 
tainly pay the poultryman to put his own eggs in storage ; for 
there would be no breakage, no express, no shrinkage in 
"candling." and the eggs would be sure to be fresh when laid 
down, and not two weeks or more old. 

Where there is no cold storage plants at hand the poultry- 
man can construct one at a moderate cost. In this case he 
would cool his plant not with chemicals, but with ire. A 
small building may be constructed for the purpose, or a room 
can sometimes be fitted up in the shed or stable. 

LIME AND SALT SOLUTION. 

Decay being caused by bacteria or germs, it follows that if 
these can be combatted or excluded decay will be arrested. 
This mav be done in five ways: 1. By keeping the eggs at 



74 

such a temperature that the germs remain dormant, or cokl 
storage. 2. By immersing the eggs in a solution which will 
cover the shell and prevent the entrance of air. the great germ 
carrier. 3. By coating the shell with some sul)stance that 
will make it impervious. 4. By destroying the germs by 
means of the X ray. 5. By a combination of one or more of 
these processes. 

In the past many have attempted to preserve eggs by 
packing them in salt, wood ashes, plaster, or even in oats; and 
when the period was short have met with comparatively good 
success. Experiments, however, have shown that these sub- 
stances are not to be depended on when it is desirable to keep 
eggs in good condition for some months, and more effectual 
preservatives must be discovered. 

Probably where eggs are to be laid down for family use 
one of the best methods is to use the lime and salt solution. 
It is inexpensive, easily prepared, and will surely do the work. 
Eggs laid down by this method are liable to have a slightly 
limy taste, which interferes with their being placed on the 
market. But for home use they are excellent. 

The formula appears in several forms, but the best is the 
one which follows, which, so far as I know, has never before 
been made public : 

Mix three pounds of quick lime in three gallons of water 
that has been boiled and cooled. Slake the lime in part of the 
water before adding all. Stir well ; then add one-half pound 
of common salt. After stirring a few times let stand for 
several hours to settle. Separate the clear liquid for use. and 
in this dissolve one-fourth ounce of boracic acid. 

Less lime will sufBce, if of good grade, but the formula 
calls for enough to insure a saturated solution. Solutions 
containing more salt sometimes serve well, but with an excess 
of salt the egg yollris often found thickened. Saturated solu- 
tions of lime alone have been used successfully. 

Eggs are kept immersed in this liquid, which should cover 
them continuously to the depth of two inches or more. 
Glazed earthenware, glass, or clean wooden receptacles, are 
used, and should be stored in a cool place, as on a cellar floor, 
until the eggs are wanted. Eggs just taken from the liquid 
should not be subjected to a sudden rise in temperature. 

The amount of solution made by this formula will be found 
sufficient to preserve 12 dozens of eggs ; if more eggs are to 
be preserved the proportions should be increased. 



/:> 



For successful preservation by any method eggs must be 
absolutely fresh with clean and perfect shells. 

XTote.— In any of the solutions given in this book allow one 
quart of the solution to each dozen eggs. The reader can thus 
determine at once what quantity to prepare: 

WATER GLASS. 

As w^e have seen, decay originates from one of two sources : 
1. The stimulation of the germ of life within the egg. 2. The 
introduction of bacteria from without. Either of these sources 
will produce chemical changes that will destroy the freshness 
of the egg. Exposing the egg for a few days to a high tem- 
perature will start incubation if the germ of life is present; 
and exposing the egg to the outside air for a longer period will 
cause decay by the introduction of germs from without, even 
if there is no germ of life within. 

Cold storage is the perfect method of preservation, for the 
low temperature stops the development of germs both within 
and vv^ithout. ' As in the world without us all vegetable growth 
is checked by the cold of winter, so artificial cold checks the 
growth of bacteria, which are minute vegetable organisms, and 
decay is prevented. But, as w^e have seen, cold storage is not 
practicable in all cases, and so other methods must be substi- 
tuted. 

Following out the principle we have discovered— that all 
decay comes from the stimulation of the germ within the egg 
or the introduction of germs from without— we can easily see 
that if we can keep the egg from the air, the great carrier of 
germs, and also keep it at a low temperature, we shall greatly 
retard if not altogether prevent those chemical changes that 
we call decomposition. 

In the section before this I have given the formula for a 
salt and lime solution that has proved very effective. In this 
section I shall outline a method that is rapidly advancing in 
favor and is probably destined in time to supersede the others. 
I refer to the use of sodium silicate, or water glass, as it is 
commonly called. Water glass is cleanly, convenient and 
sure ; and where it can be obtained at a reasonable price should 
be given the preference. 

Where it Can Be Obtained. — The merits of water glass as 
an egg preservative are becoming known and there are many 
inquiries for it at the local druggist's. But the price charged 
is often prohibitive. I have known a woman to pay 30 cents 



76 

a pint for the article. One gallon of water glass in the 10 
per cent solntion (one part water glass "to nine parts water) 
will preserve 40 dozen eggs ; and at 30 cents a pint it would 
cost six cents a dozen to lay down eggs — a price that is alto- 
gether excessive. Unless it can be procured at a much less 
cost than this its use is out of the question. 

Where water glass is bought in gallon lots (and no one 
should buy less than this) it can be obtained of wholesale 
druggists for 50 cents a gallon. The Eastern Drug Company, 
8-20 Fulton street, Boston, Mass., quotes me the following 
prices : In gallon lots, 50 cents a gallon, with 20 cents extra 
for can, which is returnable. In five-gallon lots, 35 cents a 
gallon, and 75 cents for can ; can returnable. In barrels of 
600 pounds, V/i cents a pound, or \6y^2 cents a gallon. John 
Shaw & Co., 40 India Wharf, Boston, manufacturing chemists, 
put up water glass in gallon cans, especially for Qgg preserva- 
tion, for 50 cents a gallon ; no charge for can. I have no doubt 
that in every large city water glass may be procured of whole- 
sale druggists at a reasonable figure. 

The best way to buy the article to advantage would be for 
a little group of neighbors to club together and purchase five 
gallons at a time, or even a barrel. In dividing it, remember 
that it is sold by weight rather than by measure — 11 pounds 
constituting a gallon. 

How to Use It. — The formula most generally used calls for 
a ten per cent solution — that is, one part water glass to nine 
parts water. In order to secure a perfect fusion the water 
should be at the boiling point when added to the water 
glass, and the solution should be stirred for several minutes 
with a stick. Meanwhile the eggs should l)e got in readiness. 
For containers use clean wooden l^arrels, or firkins, stone 
crocks, galvanized iron tubs, or in fact, almost any receptacle 
that is convenient. Put in the eggs, and after it becomes 
cold pour on the solution. The eggs should be well covered 
with the li(iuid, and the container should be set away in a 
cool, dark place — the cellar, if possible. 

While a ten per cent solution is generally recommended, 
yet is is probable that a much weaker solution will answer 
every purpose. Experiments conducted at the Rhode Island 
station showed that a five per cent solution^one part water 
glass to 19 parts water — will keep eggs perfectly. Owing to 
evaporation the solution is continually growing stronger, and 
its preser\'ative qualities enhanced. 



77 

Chemical changes will take place in the solntion after a 
little period. It will begin to coagulate and whiten, until 
after a while it resembles whitewash in appearance. Then a 
jelly-like precipitate will form, and the eggs near the top will 
become coated. The reader need not be alarmed at these 
chemical changes, for they do not interfere with the pre- 
servative qualities of the solution. The weaker the solution 
the less pronounced the chemical changes, and the smaller 
the amount of precipitate. A ten per cent solution will keep 
eggs perfectly, and is to be recommended for the beginner. 
After a few experiments he acqtiires confidence, and wall not 
hesitate to use a weaker solution. The writer uses a 67-3 
per cent solution — one part water glass and 14 parts water. 

When to Lay Down Eggs. — Where one keeps his own 
hens and can obtain a supply of eggs at any time, the writer 
would recommend that eggs be laid down in Alarch. The 
spring weather always stimulates egg production, and so 
many eggs ai'e put on the market, the price often drops to a 
point where it actually does not pay the cost of producing 
them. The more eggs taken out of the market at this time 
of year the less likely to be a slump in prices. AA'here it is 
necessary to purchase eggs to lay down they may be bought 
at any time in March, April and May, the months of low 
prices. 

How to Tell Fresh Eggs. — Eggs should l)e perfectly fresh 
when put into solution, and it is not always easy to get fresh 
eggs where one has to go into the market and buy. The 
solution itself afl^ords a good test of the freshness of the egg 
that is put into it. If the egg sinks to the bottom it is fresh 
and will keep well, but if it floats it is stale. The higher 
it floats in the water the longer it has been laid. The reason 
for this is that the air cell in the egg has a tendency to 
increase in size, owing to evaporation through the pores of 
the shell ; and the older the egg the larger the air cell and the 
higher it floats. 

Marketing Preserved Eggs. — Where eggs are laid down 
to be sold again much greater care must l^e exercised than 
where they are laid down for family use. In the first place, 
the number of eggs is far larger, and in case of a loss it will 
be more severe than where only the famil}^ supply is involved. 
And in the second place, the eggs must have a fresh, bright 
appearance. Where eggs are to be eaten at home the ap- 



78 

pearance of the shells is of minor importance so long as the 
eggs are fresh, but where they are to be put on the market 
one cannot be too particular. 

Make the solution as I have described : one part water 
glass and 10 to 15 parts pure water. Lay down your eggs 
every day, and as soon as they are put in the tub cover them 
with the solution. A tub will hold from 40 to 50 dozen eggs, 
according to its size and according to the size of the eggs ; 
and I have found the tub numbered "two" most suitable for 
my purpose. 

Do not put into the tub as many eggs as it will hold, but 
fill it so that the eggs can be covered to the depth of two or 
three inches with the solution. There will be some evapora- 
tion during the summer months, and if the eggs are too near 
the surface some of them will be left high and dry before the 
summer ends, and you will have rotten eggs for your pairts 
when you come to sell them. 

Each tub should have marked on it with chalk the date on 
which the eggs were laid down. Thus, eggs laid down in 
March should have "March" chalked on the tub, and those 
laid down in April should be distinguished in a similar way. 
In selling the eggs you will want to begin with the oldest 
and put them on the market first. 

The board that covers the tub should be lifted from time 
to time, and the eggs inspected to see that everything is all 
right. In case of doubt it is well to take out a few eggs from 
the suspected tub and break them. But if the eggs were 
fresh when laid down and the solution is of the right con- 
sistency, there is really very little danger. 

In la}'ing down eggs for market be sure to select those 
with the whitest shells. The water glass seems to enter into 
chemical combination with brown-shelled eggs, turning them 
a ]Mnkish hue. But it has no appreciable effect upon light- 
shelled eggs. Indeed, it is practically impossible to tell those 
which have been in the solution from those which have not, 
Avhen they are ready for market. 

AVhen the time comes to sell the eggs you will begi-n with 
those that were laid down first. As I have explained, the 
water glass will probably have coagulated, and the eggs will 
be covered witli a jelly-like precipitate. Remove as much 
of this as possible when you take out the eggs, splashing 
each egg around in the water. Put the eggs in a tub similar 
to the one they were taken from. After the tub is filled pour 



79 

■on scjft, cold water and let stand 24 hours. Then take the 
•eggs out of this and put in a basket, washing each egg before 
it is taken out and rubbing off all traces of the water glass 
with the fingers. After the eggs are dry they should be gone 
•over again. They will have a rough appearance, and look as 
if they had been in an old flour barrel, or been sprinkled with 
chalk. A brisk rubbing with a woolen cloth or old towel will 
greatlv improve their appearance, and make white-shelled 
eggs look as good as new. If 3^ou care to go to the trouble, 
a final touch with a cloth wet in strong vinegar, and then 
wrung nearly dry. will make them look very nice. Water 
■glass is an alkali and is neutralized by the acid in the vinegar. 
And now alxjut marketing these eggs. They are not 
■strictly fresh eggs, and must not be sold as such ; and, on the 
■other hand, they are much better than the average cold- 
storage eggs. A good way to sell them is to show them to 
your customers, tell them they are laid down by a special 
process, and that you will sell them for five cents a dozen 
less than strictly fresh eggs, guaranteeing to replace every 
one that is not satisfactory with a fresh egg. You will have 
■no trouble in disposing of your stock for double what you 
could have got for them in the spring. 



CHAPTER IX. 

Becomino: a Fancier. 



It will dt)ul)tless be a surprise to many who read this 
chai)ter to learn that for the average poultryman there is 
more money in utility than in fancy fowls. A little reflection 
will show why this is so. The fancy business requires the 
personal touch. A man Avho is keeping fowls for meat and 
eggs can delegate much of the work to others, and can in- 
crease his plant indefinitely. But the fancier must know his 
birds as individuals, or else employ a high-priced superin- 
tendent who does. He must know how to mate and handle 
for best results, and even then not one bird in ten will be 
likely to be a prize winner. He must pay out more for 
foundation stock, and if he wishes to introduce new blood 
must often spend hundreds of dollars for what he wants. He 
must take his birds to the shows, and the car fare, express 
charges, entr}- fees, loss of his own time, etc., will make a 
l)ig hole in his profits. Then he must advertise, and adver- 
tise generous!}', and advertising runs away with a lot of 
money. vSo it wnll be seen that the breeder of fine birds must 
get good prices for what he has to sell if his books are to 
show a balance on the right side. 

THE APPEAL OF THE FANCY. 

Still there are many to whom fancy poultry keeping makes 
a strong appeal. The Creator of the universe has implanted 
in man a love for the beautiful, and there are few objects in 
nature more beautiful than a fine specimen of one of the 
standard varieties at its best. There is an excitement in the 
attempt to produce a bird that will score high in the 90's, 
like the excitement of the chase. In the show room there is 
a battle royal that appeals to a man's fighting blood. The 
breeder is matched against other breeders of his favorite 
variety, and victory over them is sweet. The silver cup and 
the blue ribbon that he takes home to show his friends have 
a value that money cannot represent. But there is good 
money, too, in fancy poultry. If a man can produce a speci- 
men of any one of the popular varieties that will win the- 



81 

blue at one of the big shows, he can name his own price. 
Five hundred, one thousand and even fifteen liundred dollars 
have been paid for a winning male. Then it does not take 
much land or many buildings for a man to carry on quite a 
business in fancy poultry, and world-beaters may be raised 
in a back yard. All these things conspire to recruit the ranks 
of the fanciers with a stream of new men who are after fame 
and fortune in the poultry business. 

BECOMING A FANCIER— THE START. 

Unless a man buys his birds and shows as his own what 
other men have produced, the one who aspires to be a fancier 
must make up his mind to a long, slow, up-hill climb. But at 
the summit of the hill there waves a blue banner with the 
word "First" upon it in golden letters, and there approaches 
to meet him one of Uncle Sam's servants in the grey uniform 
of a letter carrier with a big bundle of letters, each containing 
a check for sittings of eggs and shipments of birds. 

The first thing a man should do who aspires to be a 
fancier is to purchase a copy of the American Standard of 
Perfection, and the second thing is to decide upon the variety 
he will keep. The Standard of Perfection is the official pub- 
lication of the American Poultry Association, and contains a 
complete description of all recognized varieties of fowls. It 
supplies the breeder with the ideal that he is to try to make 
real in his yards. As a man turns over the pages of the 
Standard and sees the beautiful iMrds pictured there, he is 
cfuite apt to become bewildered and to wonder how he can 
ever make a choice. But here is where the fancier has an 
advantage : the field is much wider for him than for the man 
who keeps utility fowls. In the utility field there are not 
more than six or eight varieties that are money makers, while 
in the realm of showdom a man can make money on anv one. 
of half, a hundred kinds. If a man breeds good birds and 
advertises them faithfully, he can find customers no matter 
what variety he selects. Then in a non-popular variety there 
is not so much competition in the show room, and a blue: 
ribbon comes one's way much sooner than is the case where 
competition is fierce. Still I would advise a man to select a 
variety that is reasonably popular, or he will be disappointed 
in sales. If he is shrewd or lucky enough to hit upon a breed 
that is about to have a boom and gets into it before the 
crowd, his fortune is. made. Let me illustrate. The Light 



82 

Brahmas are grand birds — there is something majestic and 
stately about them. They are handsome. They have many 
friends. Still, I would not advise a man to go into Light 
Brahmas. They have had their day. But the Columbian 
Wyandotte, which is a new variety, with Light Brahma 
markings but Wyandotte size and shape, would seem des- 
tined to have a great run ; for they appeal to those who 
admire the Light Brahma markings and to those who ad- 
mire the many good qualities of the Wyandottes. If I were 
starting out I should not hesitate to try them. 

THE FOUNDATION STOCK. 

Perhaps as good a way as any to get a start is to purchase 
a pen of birds of the variety one has decided upon of some 
reputable breeder in the fall. Ask him to mate them up for 
you for the best results. You can generally buy old birds 
for considerably less than you can young ones, and where 
you are not after eggs for market but for incubation, old 
birds are as good or better than young ones. You will devote 
the winter to getting acquainted with your birds. (I assume 
that you have kept fowls before and understand their care 
and management. If you do not, it will hardly pay you to 
start out with high priced specimens at first.) In the spring 
you will get out all the chicks you can take care of, and in the 
fall should have several pens of likely pullets. Mate your 
cock bird with the best of these, and send off to the man of 
whom you bought your foundation stock for more males. 

SHOW YOUR BIRDS. 

One who aspires to become a full-fledged fancier must 
show his birds. There is nothing that will help out sales 
like a good show record. There is no place in .which a man 
can learn so much in a short time as in the show room. It is 
a liberal education to see the judges work ; and the score 
card that one finds attached to his coop is of inestimable 
value : it reveals to a breeder as by a flash of light where his 
birds are strong and where they need to be built up. 
PREPARING BIRDS FOR SHOW. 

The Standard of Perfection should have a chapter on the 
preparation of birds for the show room : it would be worth 
the price of the book to a beginner. I do not claim to be an 
expert, but perhaps I can give a few hints that may be of 
assistance. 



83 

After the owner selects the birds that seem to him the 
best, he should examine them carefully to see that there are 
no disqualifications— nothing that will throw the bird out of 
the competition. The bird should be healthy, vigorous, free 
from vermin, and as near the standard weight as possible. 
Of course the prospective exhibitor has handled his birds 
more or less and treated them so well that they are reasonably 
free from shyness. There is nothing that looks worse than 
to see a bird in the exhibition coop dashing its head against 
the slats in its vain efforts to escape, or crouching in the 
corner as if half frightened to death. White birds should be 
washed, and I am inclined to think that a good washing will 
not harm birds of other colors. The process is very simple. 
Three tubs half full of water should be set side by side, of a 
temperature of about 95 degrees. The birds should be stood 
in tub number one and well soaped with Ivory or some good 
white soap, taking care to rub the soap the way the web of 
the feathers runs. After the bird has been well soaped, re- 
move it to tub number two. and rinse the lather out of the 
plumage. The bird should then be removed to the third tub 
and given a final rinse. If the bird is a white one, a little 
bluing should be added to the last water. Take the bird 
from the water and stand it on a table or box. and wipe it as 
dry as possible with towels. If you have a furnace in your 
house, and your wife will let you do so, place the sawhorse 
over the register and let the bird stand on the round of the 
sawhorse for a little while. He will be so tamed by this time 
that he will not try to get away. If you have no convenient 
register, place the bird in a large slatted box. well littered 
with straw, and let him remain in the box in a warm room 
until thoroughly dry. Before shipping the bird to the show 
feed him well, give him a little whiskey and water or a one- 
grain quinine pill, and rub his comb and wattles with a piece 
of flannel which has been saturated with alcohol. Dig out 
the dirt from under the scales on the legs with a toothpick, 
and rub the legs briskly with a piece of chamois skin. 

ADVERTISING. . 

For everything a man has to sell there is another man 
somewhere who stands ready to buy. and there is a man 
somewhere waiting to buy stock and eggs of you. How may 
you find him? I can tell you in one word — Advertise. 

I used to think that something could be done through the 



84 

local paper to sell stock and eggs, but an experiment has 
rather shaken my confidence. The fact is, not one reader in 
a hundred of the local paper is willing to pay a living price 
for stock and eggs— he doesn't know their worth. If you can 
afford to sell eggs for hatching for from 50 cents to a dollar 
a sitting, and cockerels for one or two dollars each, you can 
sell some by advertising in the local press ; but if you want 
a living price you must look elsewhere. The poultry press is 
the place for a poultryman to advertise. Time and time again 
have I had men come to me to borrow a poultry paper to find 
out where they could get stock or eggs of a certain variety. 

Fortunately there are a number of grand poultry papers 
in this country and Canada, and any one who has anything to 
sell can easily find a good medium. How shall a man decide 
what papers to advertise in? There are two rules: 1. Ad- 
vertise in papers that carry the most advertising. 2. Adver- 
tise in papers that themselves advertise. 

Advertise in papers that carry the most advertising! "But 
is not my little ad. in danger of being lost in the mass?" you 
ask. Not at all. The paper that carries the most advertising 
does so because it is the best medium. Men advertise in it 
because they have found it pays. Somebody is going to see 
and read your advertisement, and send to you for birds. 

Advertise in papers that themselves advertise! Why? 
Because those papers have for their readers those who answer 
advertisements. The reader with the mail-order habit is the 
one you want to go after. 

"How large an appropriation shall I set aside for adver- 
tising?" For a beginner, a good rule is one dollar a year 
for each bird in your breeding pens. If you have 50 birds 
your appropriation should be $50. For $50 worth of adver- 
tising you ought to be able to sell $400 worth of eggs and 
stock. 

As vou increase your breeding stock you can decrease 
the amount you allow for each bird, for a large advertisement 
pulls proportionately better than a small one. 

Some papers have what is called a flat rate — so much an 
inch, whether for one insertion or twelve. Others have a 
sliding scale — the rate being less proportionately for a year 
than for three or six months. Where you advertise with a 
paper that has a sliding scale you can arrange so as to use the 
greater part of the space from October to May, and cut down 
in the summer months. 



85 

Poultry papers generally offer special inducements to 
beginners and small breeders by running short, classified ads. 
at a low rate. These are called "Breeders' Cards," and I 
know of no way in which a man can make his advertismg 
appropriation go so far as by patronizing this department of 

the paper. 

Writing a good advertisement is quite a trick, but like all 
great things it is simple. The best advertisement tells a story 
and gives a reason. It is not funny, it is not verbose, it is 
not sensational, it is not extravagant. It is a plain, striking 
statement of facts. Write out your story, then strike out 
everv unnecessary clause and word, and let the printer display 
it to suit his taste. Study the advertisements of successful 
men in other lines, especially in the magazines, and you will 
learn much from them. 

Besides your advertisement in the paper you will need 
a neat and attractive circular. The circular will describe 
your stock more fully than the advertisement. The circular 
will save vou a vast amount of letter writing, for it will 
answer nine-tenths of the questions asked by prospective 
customers. 

Attend to your correspondence promptly, if possible 
answering a letter the very day it is received. The man who 
writes you may have written some other fellow at the same 
time, and if vou want his trade you must be prompt. 

Enclose a circular in each letter, but do not rely upon 
the circular to make a sale. Write a few cordial, friendly 
words, even if every question the man asks is answered in 
your circular. Personality is the greatest power in the world, 
and you can put a good deal of personality in a short letter. 

SHIPPING EGGS AND STOCK. 

■ Eggs for hatching are generally shipped in a basket or box 
made for the purpose. In cold weather they should be 
moved only in the middle of the day, and great care should 
be exercised to prevent freezing. 

Where eggs are shipped by the hundred, perhaps as good 
a way as any is to pack each separate egg in excelsior. Take 
a small piece of excelsior from the roll and pull the fibres 
apart, then with your thumb or with a round stick like the 
end of a broom handle, make an indentation in the mass. 
Put the egg in the hole and close in the excelsior about it. 
The egg is now in a ball or nest, protected on every side by 



86 

its resilient carrier. If carefully done the ball may be dropped 
upon the floor and the egg inside will not break. These balls 
may be packed in a box like oranges, and will go safely any 
distance. 

In shipping stock, provide light and strong shipping coops. 
If the bird is to go any distance, a loaf of stale bread soaked 
in water and placed in the box will be meat and drink for 
him on his way. Write the party to whom you ship the 
bird when you send him, enclosing express receipt. 

COMPLAINTS. 

Every shipper of eggs and stock is bound to receive more 
or less complaints. Accidents will happen, and there are 
customers hard to please. Sometimes you run across a dis- 
honest customer who wants to get more than his money's 
worth and who sends in a complaint that the eggs were 
broken when they reached him or failed to hatch. You can 
generally tell from the tone of a letter whether the writer is 
sincere or not, for an honest letter has an honest ring. 

When a complaint comes in that is unreasonable, it should 
be. met courteously and kindly, but firmly. The customer 
should be shown, if possible, the untenability of his position. 
When a complaint that is reasonable comes in an attempt 
should be made for a satisfactory adjustment. It is the prac- 
tice among poultrymen, I believe, to duplicate the order at 
half price where less than seven out of the thirteen eggs 
hatch. Where a customer is dissatisfied with the bird sent, 
he should be allowed to send him back, paying the express, 
and his money should be returned to him. While a poultry- 
man needs to make sales he needs to make friends even more, 
and a good way to secure them is to treat every man accord- 
ing to the teachings of the Golden Rule. 



CHAPTER X. 

The Trap Nest. 

The trap nest is a box or compartment with a spring door 
which automatically closes and locks behind the hen as she 
enters to lay her egg and keeps her imprisoned until released 
by an attendant. The great advantage of the trap nest is 
identification. It enables the poultryman to pick out the hen 
that lays the egg. By attaching a leg band to her ankle with a 
number thereon and keeping record, the poultryman can 
easily determine the number of eggs a hen lays in a given . 

period. 

Ten years ago, when the trap nest was a new thing, it was 
confidently predicted that it would revolutionize the poultry 
industry. It seemed self-evident that all one had to do in 
order to secure a strain of phenomenal layers was to breed 
from the birds giving the largest egg output. But experience 
has demonstrated that there is a flaw in this theory some- 
where. It does not work. At the Maine Experiment Station, 
where the trap nest was used faithfully for several years, it 
was found that there was actually a decrease in egg produc- 
tion, that the phenomenal layers did not reproduce them- 
selves. 

There are reasons for this anti-climax, if we can only dis- 
cover them. It is impossible in any given case to determine 
how much the egg output is influenced by heredity and how 
much by environment. Take a Light Brahma and keep her 
under favorable conditions, well housed and well nourished, 
and she will surpass in egg production a Leghorn that is 
compelled to dig her living out of the manure pile and left to 
roost on the branches of an apple tree. The phenomenal 
layer may exhaust her vitality in excessive egg production so 
that she is unable to transmit the faculty to her offspring. 

The great practical argument against the trap nest is that 
it takes so much time — time that would better be devoted 
to caring for the comfort and convenience of the fowls. In 
order to properly operate trap nests it is necessary to visit 
the house five times a day; and to remove a hen from the 
nest and credit her with the egg laid on a sheet of paper takes 



at least one minute. Where 500 fowls are kept there will be 
times when the operator will be kept busy six hours a day 
looking after the nests. The poultry business is sufficiently 
laborious and confining in itself without taking on this extra 
burden. 

From what has been said it might be inferred that the 
writer is opposed to the trap nest. Not at all. What the 
writer is opposed to is the extravagant claims that have been 
made by advocates of the trap nest and especially by those 
who have plans to sell. The trap nest has its uses. The 
great value of the trap nest, in my judgment, is not that it 
■enables us to breed from the heaviest layers, but that it pre- 
vents us from breeding from the poorest ones. In the same 
flock there will be birds that will lay two dozen eggs a year 
and other birds that will lay two hundred. We want to cull 
out these Aveak layers, and the trap nest will help us do it. 
Then the trap nest may have a great value in pedigree breed- 
ing, where a fancier wants to be sure that he breeds from a 
special fowl. 

MAINE EXPERIMENT NEST. 

The Maine Experiment Station, which has given to the 
poultry world so many good things, has the plan of a trap 
:nest which is simple, practical and easily constructed. "The 
"nest is a box-like structure, without front end or cover, 28 
inches long. 13 inches wide, and 16 inches deep, inside meas- 
ure. A division board with circular opening 7^ inches in 
diameter, is placed across the box 12 inches from the rear end 
and 15 inches from the front end. Instead of having the 
partition between the two parts of the nest made with a 
■circular hole, it is possible to have simply a straight board 
partition extending up 6 inches from the bottom, as shown 
:in Figure 1. The rear section is the nest proper. 

"The front portion of the nest has no fixed bottom. In- 
stead there is a movable bottom or treadle which is hinged 
at the back end (Figure 1). To this treadle is hinged the 
door of the nest. The treadle is made of 5^-inch pine stuff, 
with 13/2-inch hardwood cleats at each end (Figures 2 and 3) 
to hold the screws which fasten the hinges. It is 12 inches 
wide and 12j4 inches long. Across its upper face, just be- 
hind the hinges holding the door, is nailed a pine strip 4 
inches wide, beveled on both sides, as shown in Figures 2 
and 3. The door of the nest is not made solid, but is an 



89 



open frame (Figures 1 and 3), to the inner side of which is 
fastened (with staples) a rectangular piece of ^-in. mesh gal- 
vanized screening (dimensions 8 by 9 inches). The sides of 
the door are strips of ^-inch beech stufif 12 inches long and 
iy2 inches wide, halved at the ends to join the top and bottom 
of the door. The top of the door is a strip of hard wood 13 
inches long and IVz inches wide, halved in 2;^4 inches from 




Fig, 1. Trap Nest closed. View from above. 

each end. The projecting ends of this top strip serve as 
stops for the door when it closes (Figure 1). The bottom of 
the door is a hardwood strip IO14 inches by 4 inches. The 
side strips are fitted into the ends of this bottom strip in such 
a way as to project slightly (about 1/32 inch) above the front 
surface of this strip, for a reason which will be apparent. 

"When the nest is open the door extends horizontally in 
iront as shown in Figure 2. In this position the side strips 



90 



of the door rest on a strip of beech 1^^ inches wide, beveled 
on the inner corner, which extends across the front of the 
nest. This beech strip is nailed to the top of a board 4 
inches wide, which forms the front of the nest box proper. 
To the bottom of this is nailed a strip 2 inches wide, into 
which are set two 4-inch spikes from which the heads have 
been cut (compare Figure 2). The treadle rests on these 
spikes when the nest is closed. The hinges used in fastening 
the treadle and door are narrow 3-inch galvanized butts with 
brass pins, made to work very easily. It is necessary to 
have hinges which will not rust. 

"The manner in which the nest operates will be clear 
from an examination of Figures 2 and 3, which show a sample 
nest with one side removed to show the inside. A hen about 




Fig. 2. Trap Nest open. One side removed to show method of operation. 

to lay steps upon the door, and walks in towards the dark 
back of the nest. When she passes the point where the door 
is hinged to the treadle, her weight on the treadle causes it 
to drop. This at the same time pulls the door up behind her, 
as shown in Figure 3. It is then impossible for the hen to 
get out of the nest till the attendant lifts the door and treadle 
and resets it. It will be seen that the nest is extremely 
simple. It has no locks or triggers to get out of order. Yet 
by proper balancing of door and treadle it can be so deli- 
cately adjusted that a weight of less than half a pound on the 
treadle will spring the trap. All bearing surfaces are made 
of beech, because of the well known property of this wood to 
take on a highly polished surface with wear. The nests in 
use at the Maine vStation have the doors of hardwood, in order 



91 



to give greater durability. Where trap nests are constantly 
in use, flimsy construction is not economical in the long run. 
For temporary use the nest door could be constructed of soft 
wood. 

"The trap nests are not made with covers, because they 
are used in tiers and slide in and out like drawers. They can 
be carried away for cleaning when necessary. Four nests in 
a pen accommodate 20 hens, by the attendant going through 
the pens once an hour, or a little oftener, during that part of 
the day when the hens are busiest. Earlier and later in the 
day his visits are not so frecjuent. Th^ hens must all have 
leg bands in order to identify them ; a number of dififerent 




Fig. i. Trap Nest closed. One side removed to show method of operation. 

kinds are on the market. The double box with the nest in 
the rear is necessary. When a hen has laid an egg and de- 
sires to leave the nest, she steps out into the front space and 
remains there until she is released. With one section only 
she would be likely to crush her egg by stepping upon it, and 
thus learn the pernicious habit of egg eating. 

"To remove a hen the nest is pulled part way out. and, as 
it has no cover, she is readily caught ; the number on her leg 
band is noted and the proper entry made on the record sheet. 
After having been taken ofif a few times the hens do not 
object to being handled; most of them remaining quiet, ap- 
parently expecting to be picked up." 

IN CONCLUSION. 

Capitalize your mistakes. 

Don't slip twice on the same banana peel. 



92 

Don't trust anything to a hen's judgment, for she hasn't any. 
She is sure to do the thing you don't want her to do. The only 
safe way is to have your fowls where they are completely under 
your control. 

Read widely, but check and correct what you read by expe- 
rience and experiment. 

The best breed is the one you like best. 

Cleanliness is next to egginess. 

Keep the hens at work, and the chances of their contracting 
bad habits will be reduced to a minimum. 

A good breeding cockerel should be of good size, with well 
developed comb and wattles, a bright eye. and with a bright and 
fearless mien. In other words, he should show his masculinity 
in every act and look. 

Separate the sexes as soon as the cockerels begin to crow. 

The time to doctor a sick hen is before she is sick. 

Give value received the first time, or you may never have a 
second time. 

Fowls should never be roughly handled, violently chased or 
badly frightened. Best results can only be obtained when the 
birds feel at ease and free from the attacks of enemies of all kinds. 
The keeper, whose fowls fly at his approach, is not a success. 

Satan finds some mischief still for idle hens to do. 

In caring for the youngsters, a little neglect may mean a big 
loss. Better do it right or not at all. 

Remember that the early hatched chicks need an unusual 
amount of care in order to fully protect them from the cold of 
early spring. 

Have the best stock obtainable, and never start with anv other 
kind. Better get good birds and fewer of them. You can't 
breed anything but disappointment from poor stock. As in 
everything else, the best is the cheapest. 

Distrust the doctrinaire who says that chicks do not need 
much heat. They come from a warm place and need considerable 
warmth until well feathered out. If they have warmth they will 
grow; if not, they will become stunted and die like flies at the 
approach of frost. 

The whole tendency today on the part of those who have the 
poultry business most at heart is towards simplification of 
methods. The old farmer who feeds nothing but corn and not 
much of that, letting his hens shift for themselves on the range, 
may not be the highest type of a poultryman, but he makes 



93 

poultry keeping pay. He doesn't get many eggs, but what he gets 
are all protit. 

While there arc an indefinite number of things a man might 
do in the poultry business, yet the things that are absolutely neces- 
sary are after all very few. To keep one's hens clean, to keep 
them comfortable, to give them plenty to eat — this is about all 
there is to it. Perhaps the greatest gain a man ever makes is 
when he. resolves that he will no longer doctor sick hens — unless 
the sickness is very simple. While he may lose a few more hens 
in the course of a year than he Otherwise w^ould, yet the saving 
in time, the removal of the strain upon his patience and sympathy, 
the higher average of health on the part of the hens that remain, 
more than offset the loss. It was never intended that the poultry- 
man should add a drug store to his outfit. 

When a man sells eggs he sells futures, and when a man buys 
eggs he buys possibilities. If a buyer gets a good hatch he gets 
more than his money's worth, and if the hatch is poor he has no 
cause for complaint. If only two or three chicks come out, one 
of these may be a blue-ribbon bird that will be worth ten times 
what he paid for the eggs, at the start. 

A small flock of layers is better than a big flock of loafers. 

If you are a novice and have never exhibited, enter a few 
birds at the fall fairs. You will learn faster in this way than in 
any other. You can apply your newly acc|uired knowledge a little 
later to good advantage, and stand a better chance to win when 
the winter shows open. 

The man who orders early gets the choicest of the early stock. 
Better buv before the breeders' birds have all been picked over. 

Whatever else you economize in, do not economize in feed. 
Feed as if you w^ere a millionaire. Feed as if grain didn't cost 
anything. It is possible to get an old hen too fat, but a chick on 
a free range — never. 

Patience and gentleness arc two great assets on a poultry plant. 
It don't pay to get mad with hens. 

Not Likely to be Overdone. Is there any danger that the 
poultry business will be overdone? This is a cjuestion that must 
suggest itself to every thoughtful mind. Enormous as the con- 
sumption of eggs and poultry is. may it not be matched and 
passed by production, so that those who venture into the business 
wdll meet with loss? The possibility of this cannot be denied. 
With our modern methods of artificial incubation, by which 
chicks may be produced at any season of the year and in countless 



94 

numbers, with so many constantly preaching the profits of poultry 
keeping, there is a real danger that the business may be overdone. 
There is a limit to everything finite. But on the other hand there 
are reassuring considerations. This is a big country, and it is 
growing bigger, all the time. There are 2,000,000 more people 
in the United States today than there were a year ago, and there 
will be 2,000,000 more next year than there are now. And all 
these have to be fed. Game is becoming scarcer each year. 
Meats are constantly advancing in price. People are being driven 
into increased consumption of eggs and poultry. When eggs fall 
in price in the spring their sale enormously increases. This shows 
that the American people could consume many more eggs than 
they do now if they thought they could afford them. It is proba- 
ble that with the advance in scientific methods of production and 
storage, the price of eggs throughout the year will become more 
uniform — not soar so high in the fall nor drop so low in the 
spring. And with an equalization in price, eggs will be used even 
more than they are now. 

Easy to Get Out of. The poultry business has one feature 
which I have never heard mentioned but which is worthy of con- 
sideration ; it is easy to get out of. When a man engages in a 
new enterprise he naturally hopes and expects to succeed, but all 
the while the grim alternative of failure must lurk in the back- 
ground of his consciousness. It is said that a good general before 
going into battle always determines what he will do in the event 
of defeat. There are some kinds of business so personal in their 
nature, so complicated, that a man can get out of them only with 
considerable loss. But the poultry business is different. Sup- 
pose a man has been engaged in the production of eggs and poultry 
for market, and wishes to close out. All he has to do is to ship 
his fowls to a commission merchant in the city, and in a day or 
two there will come back a check. Suppose a man has been en- 
gaged in the production of birds for exhibition purposes. An 
advertisement in a poultry paper will find him a customer who 
will take his flock ofl:' his hands. There is a good demand for 
farms, and they are steadily advancing in price. Should a man 
discover that he is unfitted for the poultry business or grow tired 
of it, he can get out of it with as little loss as any business I know 
anvthing about. 



ERRATA. 

On page 7, the la?t word in first line of seventh paragraph 
should be "Proportions" instead of preparation. 

On page 8, the figures in third line in third paragraph should 
read "$867.45" instead of $86.45. 

On page 9, the figures in sixth line under head, "Marketing the 
Product." should read "80" cents instead of 20 cents. 



NOV 8 ^^n 



American 
Poultry Advocate 

CLARENCE C. DePUY, Editor and Publisher 



Issued Monthly. 44 to 116 pages. 



50,000 Copies Per Month. 



Subscription price, 50 cents per year. 



It is devoted to the interests of both fanciers and practical pouhrymen. It is 
authoritative and helpful in all branches of poultry work, from hatching and 
rearing of chicks, to the maturing of fowls for showroom and market. It is 
the second oldest poultry publication in the United States and stands second to 
none in its value to poultry raisers. It is helpful to the beginner as well as to 
the expert. The newest and best in poultry literature is found bet\veen its 
covers each month. 

The editorial staff is composed of some of the most able writers on poultry 
topics — men of experience. 

From an advertising point of view it is in a class by itself. The increased 
advertising patronage we receive yearly from old advertisers, as well as the 
large amount of new business, is convincing proof that the Advocate is 
"the paper that pulls." Advertising rates on application. 



American Poultry Advocate, 

907 South Sahna Street, Syracuse, N. Y. 



Lcual2 







LIBRARY OF 



CONGRESS 




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